This is always an emotional topic, and much frustration and anger always gets vented whenever it comes up. Frankly, the vast majority of that emotional energy is misdirected and thus wasted.
Self-sponsored type rating courses have existed ever since there was a commercial aviation industry, and they will not go away. Nor should they; they are a legitimate and perfectly moral way of achieving a speculative qualification. They, and their providers, are no different to the Open University, for instance, who exist to allow mature and otherwise unqualified people achieve a qualification which might improve their employability. They exist because there is a demand (and not just from low-houred wannabes), and the free market will always satisfy a commercial demand.
In fact, what is the difference between a SSTR provider and a CPL school? Both provide the training to achieve an aviation qualification which is intended to make the student employable within the industry, at a cost which provides a living for the training provider and which the buyer is prepared to pay. Even those SSTRs that provide an element of line training are no different. The only variable is the perception of how necessary such training is to obtain that job, and who should provide and pay for it.
A great many aviation wannabes have no experience of professional fields outside of flying, and assume that this is the only industry where an ever-greater proportion of training costs have been passed to the individual. Well, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Almost all professions require a large financial investment from their novitiates, and aviation is no exception - and arguably not the most expensive, either. Nor is aviation unique in its rejection of many of those who've paid for that training, though the rate of rejection may be higher in aviation than other fields.
The only area where the moral argument becomes a real issue is those few (largely US) 'co-pilot' programmes that expect you to pay to fly well beyond the normal type- and line-training period. These programmes are using fully-qualified pilots to operate their commercial schedules with no element of training and expecting them to pay for the privilege purely because they gain hours, and this is right out of order, and effectively puts people out of work (the people who should be being paid for that work). Any of you who sign up to one of these schemes should understand that you are paying to work, and doing it at the expense of people's jobs. That, at least in Europe, is on the borderline of legality and is certainly immoral - on the part of both the provider and the consumer. Line-training schemes, on the other hand, are not. They may be of limited use in the job-hunting process, or at least not as useful as their providers would like you to believe, but they are in no way immoral or unjustifiable.
Before any of you make any move to spend money on an SSTR/LT scheme, look very carefully at the market and the scheme on offer. Despite what has been said by at least one contributor here, there are never any guarantees of employment before the training is completed. There are very often no suggestions of employment at all; what you are paying for is a period of training, not an introduction to an employer. Are you better off having done an SSTR/LT package? Well, certainly not financially, and probably not in the job market, but it's your money (or at least I hope it is) - you spend it how you like.
Scroggs