Actually, up-front sponsorship does not exist anymore at all. The CTC-McAlpine deal is retrospective sponsorship. You, personally, take out a £60k commercial loan with a prescribed bank. Once you're fully trained and working with an airline, you get paid a reduced salary with the difference given to you tax-free to use as your monthly loan repayment. There's a risk of not being employed and hence not sponsored.
That's better than self-sponsorship because of the high probability of getting a well paid job flying jets at the end of it, but you're still paying for the training.
So, everyone pays for their training in one way or another.