I remember when I was a casual instructor at Camden Aero Club with about 800hrs in the mid eighties, picking up a bit of free-lance charter and stacking supermarket shelves at night, a "NASA" (it may have had one of its' name changes by then, wasn't "CATA" one of its' incarnations?) Warrior pulled up and a couple of neatly uniformed youngsters got out, one of which happened to be a guy who had been a year behind me at school.
After some pleasentries he revielied that he had almost finished his 150hr CPL at "The Academy" (Which his Mum had financed through a second mortgage) and was "Just going over to Bankstown to line up a twin IFR job, as there's no point getting the rating without a job to go to"- I saw him a couple of years later, his total time was 155hrs, and he was about to embark on a trip up north to try and fing ANY kind of flying job.
NASA and it's later clones took a lot of money from a lot of people, gave them no real insight into the business they were training for, had a reputation for producing sub-standard graduates and not living up to its' promises.
Intergrated, airline specific training is a fact of life these days, but then it was a cynical money-making exersize at the expense of a lot of peoples dreams.