I think his point is that any pilot should have flown an approach to actual minimums before they came to Mesaba.

I had my students flying around in actual and shooting real approaches for a couple of hours each when they were still private students, let alone instrument ones (not to be proficient but just for the experience). Thats they way I was trained, and it made sense to me.

I can't speak for how it works at big flight schools or colleges, but I've heard more than one captain gripe about the lack of actual instrument experience by some FOs.