What has happened over the years is that contracts are becoming leaner and leaner with less profit available. Contractors are looking for ever more 'clever' ways of ramping up the bottom line by charging for extraneous items, not limited to:
training new pilots, additional qualifications for employees, and so on.
Examples where prices have gone ballistic:
Bonding and Training. Example
New employees of the SAR contract with Bristow are now paying £30k for the privilege of joining them onto a new type with IR.
EasyJet who are shareholders of the training school @ Oxford are charging extortionate fees for their budding pilots to go through their courses there and bonding them to it when or IF they go onto flying @ Easyjet.
Almost all employers now use bonding tactics to get away with not having to pay for enrolling their new employees.
Accountants rule....................................