looking at Yammer rightly or wrongly there are some non-flight Ops employees with relatives wanting to get into BA who see the new scheme as a good thing (somebody in the family can obviously afford the 18k)..
If you have 18k lying around it's an outstanding scheme. You could almost see that price tag as a positive as it will reduce the competition
More seriously, I'm not denying that opening up BA to modular cadets is generally a good thing. I just wish they hadn't done it in a way which discriminates based on financial background. BA used to be one of the few airlines who thought talent was more important than the abiity to pay. This and the last version of the cadet scheme would suggest they now think otherwise. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong and the recruitment team will manage to get an improvement in the future, but that seems unlikely.