FWIW, I'm doing my recurrent training this week, at a training provider near Gatwick.
Went there yesterday and the coffee room was full of people being interviewed for the Ryanair Scheme, apparently they have literally thousands of applications for this and the standard answer to people saying "it's not fair to pay for this" is, "well, you don't have too!!", followed up with "you just won't work for us".
Ryans have seen a market and thay've exploited it, plenty of people have taken the bait and yes they are getting on type and getting jet experience.
I'm not advocating this but I have to say it does seem to be working better than instructing for two years (or longer) in the current environment. Sad but true.