How would you feel if you lost your job to someone who was paying to fly? Because that's what's happening here. The next step is someone who passes the line training and buys another block of hours. Twenty more years down the road will that be acceptable?
I fully understand your opinion, and whilst now that I have a proper flying job it would be easy to jump on the bandwagon and say ban the desperados who go to these lengths, let's remember that they have got themselves that way by being between a financial rock and a hard place: having thrown good money (and a lot of it) after CPL/IR training without the possibility of financial return on their investment. The problem stemmed from the decision to start training in the first place, not from the decision to pay for a rating or for line training. Too many pilots must be being trained if there is a surfeit of qualified people having to pay to get more experience to get themselves noticed. It's easy to blame them but let's try and remember the desperation which forced them into this in the first place.
Whilst I did not myself have the choice of paying for ratings or line training, if I could have found the funds it would have been a fairly good investment and most probably got me that return on my initial investment (which was beginning to look a total loss at the time) because it would have helped me into a jet salary. Although I was forced to do it the "hard way" by flying a photographer, there weren't many GA jobs around, and I was lucky to get one, especially in my area of the country. This type of work does not pay well, and the two hour each-way drive from home to work cost more than I was earning, so, in a way, I was paying for my hours. Even now, I am so low paid as a turbo prop FO there is little profit after travelling and living expenses, my salary is half that of an Easyjet FO. In a way I am STILL paying for experience, why is that more acceptable?
Without hours and experience few get jobs (although some are lucky), more often than not those hours and experience are required to include turbine and multi crew time. Quite often jet time is the preference.
What's the answer? I've not a clue.
It would help if wanabes were better educated as to the true facts facing them at the end of their initial training. It would also help if it were possible to plan a career strategy and go step by step up the rungs of your flying career, but so much of it depends on luck and being in the right place at the right time, as there are simply not enough jobs to go around at any level of the ladder. Let's not forget that the instructing route generally involves paying for a rating, it just costs less, but then the pay is very low too.
Whilst I can see that having to pay for line training is a poor thing to be asked by an airline, I can see why the trainee does it: to them it is simple logic.