Worzel I don't doubt that the main motivation for Bond/Astraeus' pre-course selection procedure is to avoid the problems that 'selection by available cash' could present! Essentially, the students on the Bond/Astraues scheme have been through a very similar selection procedure to those airline recruits you refer to.
All airlines train on the line. Once the academic type rating has been achieved, the student is quite legal to operate under the supervision of a training captain on revenue-earning flights. You, and IFALPA, are quite right to suggest that this process is potentially dangerous if adequate selection and assessment proedures are not in place or adhered to. I don't think there's any reason to suggest that is the case here, but it may well apply in other TRTOs or airlines.
As for making a profit - of course Bond/Astraeus are out to make money. But I think it's too simplistic to suggest that flying students on the line reduces Astraeus' costs - which I think is your implication. I imagine that the costs of maintaining a training organisation large enough to take on TRTO students far outweigh any small benefits to be gained from 'unpaid labour'. I haven't got access to Astraeus' books, but a training captain normally costs 25% or more than a regular line captain - who would otherwise fly the trip. That 25% represents a considerable amount of an FO's basic pay! There are, I'm sure, other costs incurred to offset against the savings made. I'm also aware that a TRTO scheme is a useful way of employing training capacity a company has but isn't using for its own needs; I have no way of knowing what the balance is in Astraeus' case, but I do believe that Hamrah has referred to it in a previous topic.
In short, I don't think there is a safety problem here - but the potential is there in less well-run schemes.
Scroggs