An excellent post with some very wise observations Aerodynamisist. The commitee approach however is a little different to what I had in mind.
The fact that the airlines say that "they are scraping the bottom of the barrel" means a radical different approach is needed to supplement perhaps what the student is already hearing, but not responding to.
Perhaps they need to hear the message from an independent source ( one whose agenda is to get them where they want to go, not biased towards just heaping up more hours)
I am talking about having their own personal representative helping them all the way with the sort of feedback they need.
The fact that not one student has reponded to this forum yet tells me that most don't really seem to care.
You know it reminds me of the old Bible verse in Proverbs 16:25 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
In other words you can get to where you want to go, but you deffinitely have to go about it the right way