I really do not wish to get dragged into turf wars between FTOs on pprune. It's not what the wannabees want to see, and the moderators do not want to have their bandwidth abused. I do not see it as my role to tell students what course they should do. If you read my posts you will find that I confine myself to giving professional advice on navigation, flight planning and instruments or adding the occasional anecdote from practical flying experience to illustrate some more general point. Sometimes I correct errors of fact about OAT or, as happened recently, suggest that there are administrative procedures for resolving problems which can be better than posting on a public website.
However, since you ask, I believe that there are merits in all 3 (or 4) methods of entry, but different methods suit different people, with different amounts of available money, different ages, different family circumstances, and different abilities to concentrate and study.
Integrated has the advantage that, except for those with unusual determination and concentration, it is usually the quickest route. This can be important if the graduate then gets employed quickly. If you pass out 3 months earlier and start work at £35000 pa, that is the best part of ten thousand pounds in earnings and to some extent compensates for the higher cost of integrated. Integrated also suits those who have the money and like the structured approach and the discipline of a fixed classroom timetable and a fixed structured flying syllabus. You don't get 'hours building', ie, boring a hole in sky to get log book time in integrated. Every flight is a planned exercise which in intended to develop your professional flying skills.
Residential Modular can be almost as quick as integrated. The ground school should be equally good either way. Some FTOs, however, do not always put as much thought and supervision into their modular flying packages as an integrated course. It is possible for the student to supervise his own flying to make sure that he gets the right mix of exercises, but not all students have the necessary experience or judgement. Unless you get the phasing right it is not always quicker and, of course, whilst the flying cost might be cheaper you still have to pay for living expenses whilst training. If the training course or the intervals between the various parts of your package is longer, this may wipe out some of the cost differential.
Distance Learning Modular can fit in well with people who still need to earn a living whilst studying, but it requires a great deal of self-discipline and motivation. Whilst most FTOs who offer it give a good back-up service by phone and email, it is not the same as seeing your instructor every day and getting him to explain things on a whiteboard. It is cheapest and, for the exceptionally determined, it can be the quickest, but most people find it hard. Whilst the best get extremely good results, they are unusual, and the average mark is lower and the drop-out rate is higher.
Schemes which appear to be sponsorships but in fact bond you to a low salary for quite a long time are now appearing. These are attractive to people who really have no money, especially in times of low employment, but they are difficult to get on and may turn out to be less of a bargain than they appear if employment picks up and you find that your contemporaries are on £35000 a year three years earlier than you.
It's all horses for courses, really, and neither I nor Mike Taylor, Oxford's Careers Advisor or Marty White, Oxford's marketing manager, push students one way or another. We always tell them to consider all options and also to consider all FTOs, not just Oxford, and then choose what is best for them. A glance at the @SK OXFORD website will confirm this. However, we find that when they have considered all this, a lot of them choose the Oxford APP. But, unlike you, I never direct them towards one course or another.
It is for that reason that I found offensive the suggestion that either I or Keith Williams would make indefensible marketing comments or say privately on the phone what we would not post publicly on pprune. Get your own act together first!
However, I do accept the apology in your last post. But do think carefully about what you say about other people. Read your Shakespeare. Othello says:
"He that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And leaves me poor indeed".
And that is all I wish to say on the subject. I shall not respond to any further replies on this thread for the reasons given in my first paragraph.
Last edited by oxford blue; 20th April 2004 at 15:06.