First off Kyle, Universities were free from a period of 1974 to 1989, let's not make it sound like it's always been free before the current generation in University now. Second of all, we're talking about Aviation Training here which has never been free except in the case of Scholarships or perhaps the Military if you want to look at it that way.
As I tried to point out, those Forecasts are extremely misleading and simply saying "Look, Boeing and/or Airbus say we're going to need 28,000 new Pilots in x years!" is naive to the extreme but don't take that as a personal sledge, it's been a line peddled for a very long time by many and sundry as a lot of the older blokes and sheilas here will gladly tell you and there have been few situations where it has actually come true and Pilots have simply walked in the door and gotten jobs.
You need to understand that a lot of these positions are in Europe and China primarily, which means they will be snapped up by those with the relevant Passports, something never gone into much detail when it comes to selling flight training to people. In Europe they do their training and almost always finish with a Jet endorsement such as a 737 or 320 and then go straight to a right hand seat in a lot of cases and usually have to pay their way at exorbitant costs to be there. The US is not far behind in these practices and will also account for a large slice of these positions. The number of these positions that will be filled by Australian Pilots I'd say will be a small slice.
Let us also not forget that it is Boeing and Airbus who keep putting out these "Forecasts" which are oft to change, they don't really care about the impacts, they just want to put out the idea that Pilots are needed so get people moving through the meat grinders ready to fill the seats they put together, a shortage would hurt them badly as then Airlines will be less likely to purchase Aircraft if they fear there aren't enough Crew to fill them, it's marketing for them. Also let us not forget that these numbers get higher due to people dropping out of the industry and needing to be replaced and you then need to question why they are dropping out of the industry, it's not usually because they loved it so much they couldn't bare it anymore!!
And don't go fooling yourself into thinking the Government make money from these "Loans" as others have mentioned the country is currently Billions of dollars in debt due to these loans, the money is made by encouraging innovation in the country and thusly hopefully increasing the number of jobs and people employed to raise more taxes, not in the highly bloated University systems and the money paid back through it. The 20% is also to cover not just the loan you've and others have taken out but also to cover for those who don't end up paying back their loans.
All in all, it is far more complicated than it all appears on the surface and Aviation is an industry that has a long and proud history of selling people on dreams and whispers.