Nichibei,
I think you miss my point. The fact is, that if the OAA (or Cabair, FTE, CTC) route is a given individuals preference for training, then the cost is high. This cost is the same, regardless of whether you have a job offer, a la Netjets cadets, or whether you self sponsor and pray like hell there will be something for you fifteen months hence.
Therefore, given that regardless of the presence or absence of a job offer, the student in question will incur that debt it is clear that having A) a job offer on the table at the end of your training [all things being equal] B) Having some element of your salary paid 'tax free' (probably not completely true, but near enough) enables a more comfortable repayment than would otherwise be felt by someone who took a job with the same salary, but none of the tax breaks.
My point RE: HollingworthP is that during the 15 month duration of the course, his mortgage lender will require he continues to pay to keep the roof over his head. He needs to do this, whilst having no earnings due to being a full time student. This is certainly a troublesome conundrum. Those students who take a loan are able to defer the loan repayment until 6 months post course - thus, whilst this does incur interest, they are then at least trying to repay a loan from (hopefully) an income....surely an easier feat than from no income...
The point RE: any student not being able to get a mortgage is valid to some degree, but is independent of whether you have any job offer....it is simply the price of integrated flight training. As Adios says, one size fits all advice rarely fits all, or even most. Hence I felt your response to HollingworthP was disproportionate.