One of the beauties with modular, is that you set the time scale yourself. You can run every module back to back if your finances and situation allow, or if you need break to save up some more money, you take a break. You pay the schools as you go, giving you less fiscal risk should a school go tits up, (look at what happened to cabair, long established integrated school that shafted kids a few years ago). And if a school is not delivering on its promises, you quite simply take your custom elsewhere, integrated they have you over a barrel on all of these aspects.
I think it also teaches a bit more self resilience and discipline than integrated where you get spoon fed the whole way.
Do large airlines prefer integrated? Depends. Partly on how lazy I think their HR depts have become! On my type rating with a large blue tailed loco this year, about half of us were modular.
One other thing to consider around the costs, is your repayments afterwards. With the way salaries are going you limit yourself on jobs you can accept when you pass, I did some bush flying out Far East, pay was peanuts and couldn't have accepted the job had I had huge integrated bills to cover., yet the experiences gained were priceless. Also when you do get into an airline, chances are you will live somewhere else many miles from home, having to pay rent, and huge repayments, on a low salary, that is even before you have started to dream of buying a house! Oh yeah, let alone having to pay for a type rating.
The money you can save on training, whilst still training at highly reputable modular schools has many many positives.