Absolutely not. If you're advocating for this, you've never trained a "prior experience hire" who never actually talked to a plane in their time in the service. Let me tell you, it ain't fun and it ain't easy. I don't get paid enough as an OJTI when you come in and have a basic understanding of the rules and phraseology, let alone if you come in knowing absolutely nothing. Especially at a slow place where the trainee only gets to talk to like 10 planes a day, progression is very very slow. They need that repetition. It's not my job to whisper everything in your ear so you can parrot me and to teach you every single rule and concept, all your separation requirements, all your a/c performance/characteristics, etc... I'm there to teach you how to apply the rules and things you already know to this airport.
The academy is very good at laying a groundwork foundation of basic air traffic skills. It also helps determine if a new hire is teachable. In the long run, it definitely speeds up the certification process and saves money as opposed to just learning everything at the facility. One new thing they are doing is sending prior experience new hires to the academy now for classes to my understanding. Like we're getting a new hire here with radar experience who will have to go to tower class. That's probably dumb and a waste of time though. It should be a case by case basis imo when it comes to prior experience. But either way, the faa definitely needs to do a better job at vetting their experience so I'm not teaching people from the ground up.
