It is rare that a candidate self funds these days, they want it all and they want it now. CPL/ME-IR/Instructor Rating, all done in about 230 hours. And you'd all be pleased to know that quite a number of these courses are pushed and promoted by government institutions, TAFE's and Uni's. And they do-not-care who signs up. The could not care less what sort of financial difficulty the student will end up in. That's probably the job of a good parent, the financial education side of things.
It's been a long time since civilian flying trainers outside cadetships have been selective. And that really tells you the story, the cadetships have a vested interest in the final product and even though the candidate is self funding they also don't want too many time wasters in the mix. The independent schools training for VET or self funding pilots don't care whether you get a job at the end, or even finish the course, they just need the cash input. That being said TAFE and Universities are only interested in aviation because they can profit from it, TAFE in particular has used significant government funding to basically rip the heart out of most independent flying schools by offering ridiculous priced aviation theory and courses that pre 2000 would be conducted in a flying school at significant profit for the operator. We used to charge just under $1000 for a week long full time IREX course and get several candidates, they would run every 1 to 2 months, had time for personal interaction, focused on not just content to pass the IREX but also practical IFR tips and techniques and there was close to 100% pass rate. TAFE came along and put 30 candidates in a room, subsidized and charged $100 with no personal interaction and just a lecturer that read from a book, very little practical content, focused on just passing the exams, said you could count it towards a diploma, etc etc, half the students on a course did not even have the requirements to sit IREX, and the TAFE pass requirement was 50% on the final exam set by the tutor. The Universities were a little bit better, as you were paying a lot more for the experience, however places like Swinburne you came out with half the knowledge for an aeronautical engineering degree. Even then most courses were just thrown together parts of engineering or business degrees with a flying component to make it 'Aviation'.
So why was I upset at the schools losing the lucrative theory courses, well those courses cross subsidized the flying school, they could pay for a lot of things and keep the aircraft hire costs minimal to just cover the planes. Now a flying school pretty much just has to make money on the flying side, good luck with that.... So in reality the student is still paying for those courses, its just added onto the hire rate for the aircraft now making the flying side more expensive, then you also pay the TAFE, Uni and whoever is doing the theory.