In theory this is a worrying situation indeed.
The most worrying aspect is the cover-your-arse mentality of some airline recruiters. If they take on a cadet from an unknown school and (s)he fails the type rating, they might have to answer to superiors and justify why that person was hired.
But recruit someone from OAT, and if that cadet fails, then the recruiter will say - hey, they've been delivering good pilots to us for the last XX years, and the system has been working fine, so if an individual fails, it's not our fault! Kick'em out, problem solved.
Of course, in reality OAT don't produce better pilots than many other schools. But they deliver their pilots with a sort of unwritten guarantee which airline recruiters can fall back on if things go wrong during the type training.
But in pratice, the good news is, unless another Sept 11th happens, there's no way that all UK recruitment (never mind JAA recruitment in general) can be satisfied by the intergrated cadets of the top 2 or 3 schools alone - particularly if the projected growth figures for UK and European air travel over the next few years prove to be accurate.
Also, many recruiters don't want the type of 250-hr cadet who had daddy put up his house as security to get a loan for for the APP. The self-improver route still shows a great deal of dedication, determination and persistence which perhaps doesn't mean a lot to certain airlines - especially those with a cover-your-arse-mentality- but to others, I think it does.
Yeah,
KK
PS - Dave Martin - you make an interesting point. True, business might "work that way", "whether we like it or not" - but don't forget, so does marketing.
There simply is NO GUARANTEE that you will end up with a job upon spending 30 grand extra at Oxford. Further, there are NO CLEAR FIGURES in existence anywhere that show how much *better* your chances are. Talking of business? Talking of ROI? You need figures to make these decisions. This thread in itself is a reflection of the inconsistency regarding employment figures of APP graduates.