Eyon, I don't see what's so bad about the J* program. I've talked to the head of their pilot recruitment and other influential people who work with J*. So far the longest a cadet has waited to get a job after completion of their training is 3 weeks. They will get their ATPL's in 3-4 years and be doing roughly 800-900 hours a year flying. They will be on a junior first officer salary which if you followed the senate enquiry was said to be $87,000 a year (this isn't the base salary though, it includes overtime etc benefits). After they have enough hours to get ATPL's they will be on regular J* first officer salaries which are just under $100,000 per year. I was also informed that they will likely be offered command positions after the 6 years, so that will again increase their salary to just under $170,000 a year.
J* have over 40 orders for new aircraft at the moment, the crew to plane ratio is 6:1. There will be plenty of positions available for cadets. Airlines are not looking into ga any more, especially overseas. Its only in Australia and USA that ga is the natural progression to an airline. In Europe, cadet programs have been in place for over 20 years! They have proven to make great pilots, actually better than ga pilots. Cadets are trained from the start to fly as a team, as a crew, and don't spend years in the outback developing bad habits. The hundred's or thousands of hours you accumulate in ga are not very valuable. Airlines won't care weather you have 1000 hours in ga or 3000 hours in ga.
Another common alternate in Australia is to do a 3-4 year university degree which you get your CPL and IR at the end. This costs around $130,000. The J* course costs around $200,000 total including A320 endorsement in HK. More specifically the phase 1 before you get your A320 endorsement costs $124,000 and that includes CPL, IR, Frozen ATPL, gas turbine time. Even if you didn't get a job in J* after for a highly unlikely reason as another GFC you'd have qualifications which prepare you better for ga than the uni alternate. Also the Phase 1 of the J* ab-initio course only takes 18 months not 3-4 years.