From what I hear almost everyone has finished and are happy
So what are you complaining about?
As far as Pay to Fly goes, yes if you look at it in the way that you give them money to fly yes.. but if you're not up to standards even though you've given them a lot of money ABY is not willing to risk the safety of 100's of others because you've got money... simple.
Return on investment? Let's say you've got F/O in 3 years of starting at Alpha and now on average AED35k/month (we won't include the time up to F/O making the "low salary" plus flying allowance); you're making AED420k/year all inclusive. Lets say you decide to rent a nice apartment and get a loan for a car you'd never get in the western world because if you did it would either get stolen or keyed, you're left with about AED250k. Now lets say you don't live in poverty but not blowing your money every week on stupid stuff, you spend AED50k/year on recreation.
You're left with around AED200k that you can put towards your debt of AED570k and have it paid off in 3 years whilst living the lifestyle that most go to Dubai to live.
Now lets take the Oxford Cadet scheme with lets say JetStar... It costs around AU$120-150k same sort of scheme and eventually you get into an a320. (we'll assume after 3 years) now you are on AU$90k/year, you get taxed around AU$21.5k leaving you with around AU$68.5k. I won't even bother doing that math on the same living the same lifestyle as you would in Dubai. Having an apartment in downtown Sydney or Melbourne is easily be $1,500/week!
Anyways, you all get the picture. In my mind, good return on investment...but what do I know.
Fly safe.