Diffrent
It is very diffrent from country to country. I think Sweden is the only country that have fully funded university program up to ATPL. In Sweden there is also goverment funded highschool pilot programs. The question in here is why the airlines have sponsored traning instead of using self sponsored pilots. Like in every other country there are to many pilots and to few jobs. Then you can ask yourself why the goverment is training more than ever when there are many self sponsored pilots out there without a job. That the goverment should pay is a trend that started just a couple of years ago.
I can not se any logical explanation for either airline sponsored programs or goverment sponsored programs when the market is as it is.