It wasn't lower standards so much as once you'd built twenty of them, building twenty more back to back allowed you to get really good at being efficient.
Today they keep switching things up so much between each iteration.
I don't know about the CVE, but the earlier Liberty ships were not particularly well constructed (brittle steel that resulted in some of them breaking in half in the middle of the Atlantic under cold conditions).
But for the few that broke in half, several more were sunk by U-Boots. They weren't expected to last many more years after the war (life span of only 5 years) and it didn't matter that much given the short term necessity of the war.
The escort carrier is by design definition created with lower standards. It sacrificed speed, carry capacity, armor and offensive weaponry for the sake of pumping them out as fast as possible.
I mean, when the base is a civilian ship, its clear that they're not working with some massively high standard to start with.
But for the few that broke in half, several more were sunk by U-Boots. They weren't expected to last many more years after the war (life span of only 5 years) and it didn't matter that much given the short term necessity of the war.