Another perspective on bonding...
The concept of bonding is de rigeur in most businesses, the problem more lies with the staggering costs in aviation. If I were to get IT training from my employer and then leave within 18 months I have to repay the whole cost of the training (they don't bother working out the reduction). The sums are potentially much less, but even in IT it is realistically possible to clock up £5-6K worth of training in one year, a one week course is £1800 min, often in the £2K region.
To become a certificated Java Developer (a type rating for a programming language) would cost about £4K if you followed the recommended training path; although the option to just buy some books from Amazon to self-study is sufficient for many.