It is fairly easy to learn to drive a car, or fly a fighter aircraft. The hard part is doing so in a useful fashion.
This. Consider as well that a spacecraft is many orders of magnitude more complicated than either a car or a fighter plane. Even with neural sockets and wetware, the mind would still have to get used to doing all that multitasking in the background, whether on a conscious/semi-conscious/unconscious level while also still regulating the biological functions of the pilot, and not getting the two confused (ie, command for "exhale" does not become "blow airlocks to vent atmosphere"). It's not enough to simply "know" how to do it; you have to repeatedly go through the motions to get into good habits.
I would also agree that any pilot who ends up in one of the military schools would be put through regular military training as a matter of course... If the pilot washes out of the program, but isn't mindlocked or otherwise incapacitated, the military would probably hang on to such a person as a new grunt, but wouldn't want to start training over again.
With the various PF references posted, I'm inclined to believe the process remains one over several years at least, even despite technological improvements since the Jovians gave the tech to the Caldari.