"then shows up at a regional airline, I would imagine there's going to be some pretty serious culture shock there,"

I'm less worried about culture shock and more worried about people going for some direct track program as a way to bypass paying their dues. I think airline pilots are simply normal pilots who happen to work for an airline. The more experience a pilot has, the better, dot period. I just have a problem with dangling the carrot of "direct entry for a price" into pilot training. It opens a whole can of worms that we have already seen causes trouble.