While I do not condone questionable employment practices, the MPL scheme is, and has been demonstrated to be a more effective course at preparing students for a specific role. All these early posts about flying around in a single/multi piston aircraft are rubbish.
The facts are that the MPL course is no shorter, and is in fact more expensive for both the student and the operator. The main benefit is that students arrive to the airline with a higher skillset that a traditional ATPL student as they have had so much more exposure to multipilot operations.
No point training a race drive in a Ford Fiesta, then give them the minimu possible training in the F1 car before throwing them on the race track.