Colgan had the lowest hiring requirements in the US. They wanted cheap help and got it. Starting out with them would be a disaster to master flying so you could get a real job somewhere. Normal pilots wouldn't have stalled, would have known how to recover by not bringing the nose up and wouldn't have aggravated it further by reducing flaps. After a few thousand stall recoveries both teaching and receiving it is such a simple procedure it could be done half asleep. We have had our few pilots that constantly fail check rides and are retrained to proficiency to get them through. They are still dangerous because you can't train high time dangerous pilots to proficiency. You just give up and lower the standards, sad.