Those programs are what you make of them, but as other's say, they are bloody expensive, and you are paying $200,000 for tuition and flying and everything else during those few years to get paid $20,000/yr when you get out. It's not even the overall cost, it's the interest that kills you. For a 70K loan, you can end up paying $130K total, which if you think about what you could have done with that money, much better things come to mind. Going to the school doesn't "get" you anything. You still have to go fly for a regional. You still have to build up turbine PIC time. You can not just graduate and in a few years move to a major airline. These schools are trying to sell the "pilot shortage" line heavily. They actually believe it, but it can't be substantiated with all the other factors and unknowns in the industry and universe. Plenty of us that went to school 10+ years ago were also told how the industry was in a "down" cycle and just a few years away from a huge "up", and that we were going to be getting into the market at the "best time". That never happened, so don't count on it and make sure you ask the correct questions. How many graduates have moved on to major airlines? How long did it take them? How much did they earn in between? Is that worth it?

The schools are what you make of them. Some blatantly wrong information here in this thread. All the big schools have excellent maintenance and switch out the entire fleets every few years. They get brand new aircraft when they do. They have a lot of FAA oversight and they generally maintain the best practices in the entire industry in terms of safety and policies. They have high standards and they require their students to meet them. This causes a huge problem though. If you get there and spend half of that money I mentioned above, only to wash out in the middle, what do you do? Lots of people encounter this early on and even later in training. Not everyone can be a pilot, and plenty of people are convinced that it will only cost "x" amount. They are dealing with high school students that have often never had to be responsible for anything in their life, at least not seriously. Then they are thrust into a situation where they are required to study, show up on time, do the work necessary, do the extra work necessary when they are falling behind, and generally be motivated. These programs aren't trying to "steal" money or intentionally lie to you about the training, but they don't accept substandard performance and your motivation is the primary factor as to how well you do.

That level of standardization and education is not as concrete at a random local FBO, they may have some good old time instructors, and contract with some good DPEs that will ensure you meet the standards, or, they may have poor quality and contract with DPEs that don't generally enforce the standards. I've seen both extremes, but generally less enforcing of standards with these schools.

Then there are the "in the middle" schools, like ATP and others. These generally try to put you through a program VERY fast, as fast as possible, and you may not be able to repeat the performance in a month, and often their checkrides are so well "known" that everyone knows exactly what questions will be asked and the exact progression of the flight. Again, some of these do a decent job at delivering what they promise, but you lose a lot of experience by doing your certificate over 2 months vs a year.

In the end, where your degree comes from doesn't matter. It should be in something that would allow you to "branch out" and do something besides piloting. Even those big universities can offer something like this, and you can get into dispatch, operations, engineering, meteorology, and others. You have to be very careful how you take classes though and not get caught up in the "one horse show" where you are betting everything on maintaining your medical and the health of the industry. Two things that can just collapse for you with no warning. If your family has hundreds of thousands of dollars just burning a hole, go to these schools, fly in their programs, rent planes outside of this and fly all over the place while you are flying all over the place. Get involved in as many things as possible. If you don't have this kind of money, think about what is REALLY important and how you can achieve these things without wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars. The degree doesn't mean much, and the entire industry has some explaining and reorganization to do if they want to attract motivated pilots. Realize what you can do to make yourself better and all the opportunities out there besides being an airline pilot. Trust me, those aren't the only guys flying airplanes.