Originally Posted by
cessnacaptain
Okay...I'm not one to advocate one career path or another, but there is at least Some disparity between those with aviation university education and those without.
I think of it this way, whose airplane do you want your family to get on? On one side you have the mom and pop graduate, who got all his ratings and in order to get to 1500, bought a Grumman or a 1950 C152 and flew it all over Kansas to build his time (in VFR, because it's just too much work filing flight plans!). Or washed airplanes and got the chance to fly pipers around the pattern a few times a week.
Or the UND or ERAU graduate, who just like the other guy, got all his ratings by taking the SAME test. But maybe he only has 800 hours. But that graduate has been training for the airline industry since he was working on his private pilot certificate. There are some things people just don't learn at small schools. They don't take semester long CRM classes (or even the hour long brief like during initial), or study in-depth aviation accidents and why they happen. Or take advanced aircraft systems classes that most airline pilots would scratch their head at at times. No, these things aren't going to be found in the commercial PTS and then quizzed on. But it's knowledge that they can use and apply from the begginning of their training to when they are at a 121. Is an extra 700 hours of pattern work and cross country from bum****** to east bum****** the same as that education? IMO no.
Again, I'm not saying that just because they attended a school their leaps and bounds better than the next guy, but some consideration should be given. You are getting SOMETHING for that extra 100K, whether some people believe it or not
I would honestly feel more comfortable with the person who flew all over the place in the Grumman. I think that learning by doing, by making mistakes while on your own, leads to a higher level of correlation (the highest level of learning) than what one might learn at a strictly standardized puppy mill. Certainly it's wonderful to have access to advanced classes, but these classes are not limited to the University environment. These puppy mills also tend to build their graduates into thinking that they are "super pilots" just because they attended a name brand school. In my opinion, the super pilot mentality is a very dangerous mentality to have in professional aviation. I'd like to think that the person who purchases their own aircraft, in your scenario, by flying all over has had enough stumbling blocks in the real world flight environment, to remind him/her to stay humble. Also, I'm skeptical of any training institution that has an in-house pilot examiner. I would much prefer the school that uses an unbiased third party.
Both worlds can provide excellent training in separate ways. Claiming that one path of training is better than the other shows a lack of understanding the other aspects and benefits of from other parts of general aviation.
just my tarnished two pennies