According to a new report from 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman this will soon change. Gurman writes that Apple is looking to expand its beta testers to regular Apple Store employees. This gives the employees a chance to check out, learn, and report bugs on the firmware.
Many users have complained about the decline in quality of newer iOS firmwares. Personally, with iOS 8 I have seen more bugs than ever and it still seems like it is less than perfect. No word on when this program will roll out, but hopefully this will give Apple more bug reports and time to fix them before the final public release.