"A school leaver who wants to be a pilot is around 18 years of age, and while there are some mature 18 year olds, maturity tends to come with time. One way of doing that at the moment is to give someone a commercial pilot's license and get them to go out and mature in an environment such as PNG or the bush. Alternatively you can mature them in a more controlled environment. One of those has traditionally been the military, who do it extremely well -
university is becoming another pathway."
Really?! From my observations, uni life is traditionally way more about doing as much socialisation as possible and minimal work. Calculating how many questions you can get wrong in order to 'pass.' Figuring out who got the most drunk on the weekend and waltzing from one party to the next while trying to get as many chicks as possible. Really good maturing going on there!
Not suggesting that all uni students are useless party animals who don't work hard mind you. But to suggest that it is somehow superior to 'real life' and real world experience is going to take some real work to convince me.
Oh, and by the way, you won't find any 18 year old, fresh out of flight school kids in PNG...
