Integrated is the equivalent of the factory line product - each student supposedly identical and making the minimum standard.
These students are as individual as anybody else. I can assure you that all the ones I have flown with have been significantly better than "minimum standard." That isn't to say that all students who pursue this route are any better or worse than anybody else in respect of various criteria. However the training is continuous, structured, verifiable and often conducted in conjunction with various airline customers own mentoring schemes.
In an industry where standard operating procedures form the backbone of the flight operations training regime, as well as the day to day operational requirements, this type of airline orientated training is often seen as a necessary pre-requisite in the transistion of very low houred candidates into a cadet airline structure.
30 years ago you would see a few low houred pilots entering airline operations. These candidates came from a small number of approved, full time training establishments (Hamble for BEA,BOAC,BA, Perth, Oxford etc.) The other "self improver" candidates would require significantly greater experience (often thousands of hours) gained through that improvement path. Indeed outside of the "approved" structure the minimum hour requirement for a CPL was 700 hours.
The modular option was introduced at the same time as various national anomolies were removed from the UK licensing system. However this didn't suddenly mean that a CPL and 200 hours was a passport into an airline job. In many respects the old "approved" system is still in existence, whereby the integrated training that a few establishments provide is used as a seamless integration path into a number of airlines. It is something those airlines have a control and input with. It provides a cadet structure that they consider "low risk" because of their experience and relationship with those training providers.
Beyond that, the CPL/IR and 200 hours should be viewed as an aerial work licence that provides the starting point for a long and normally arduous path to those end goals. To view it as anything else, is ambitious.
The situation hasn't been helped (or perhaps it has depending on your point of view,) by one or two airlines, whose CEO's have vocally declared a desire to kill the first officers role completely, or replace them with Cabin crew etc. They are not allowed to do this, so in the meantime they have been happy to adopt the next best thing, and have hopefull candidates pay for their own very expensive training, with the hope that they they can occupy the seat in the role, at whatever terms and conditions those companies stipulate. Even then these opportunities are few and far between and fraught with significant risks for the aspirants.
Apart from a few individuals using recognised and mentored training regimes, 200 hours has never been a realistic level of experience for this type of work. It wasn't 30 years ago, and it still isn't today. The cocktail of isolated pockets of corporate naivity and greed, mixed with a large number of unrealistic aspirants is inevitably going to result in a lot of disappointment.