Dear Colin
No need to rush as age is definitely on your side. If anything I would say you are maybe a little too young to worry about ATPL at the moment.
You obviously have an aptitude for learning, and even if you did a degree over 3 years lets say, you would still only be 20 and you would have a little more experience under your belt.
I am not saying you're not mature enough to start airline training now, it's just that you may find the airlines would shy away from someone so young, I may be wrong being an old git of course.
You're right about the airlines not sponsoring so much these days, since 911 it's been used as an excuse for lots of things and rightly or wrongly sponsorship was cut to save money, just my opinion.
Have a good search through the forum for training both integrated and modular and make your own mind up about the best route for you. Whatever you do, don't rush.
Believe it or not there are people as old as 35 or 40 still getting training and jobs
obviously you don't want to wait that long, but you get my point.
I am a ground instructor at a Flight Training Organisation and I'm about to move on to another one, so if you've any questions feel free to PM or email me, but please don't just take my word for anything as there are a lot of bull
s out there and I of course could be one of them, so ask the questions, do the research and then make your decision.
One thing, you will need a class 1 medical, if you fail that then everything else is by the by, so it's worth getting that done first, also the GAPAN (do a search in this forum) aptitude tests are good value I'm told. Again it's more expense but better to find out before you spend a shed full of dosh whether you are able to be an airline pilot or not.
Good luck in whatever you do.