In my opinion everyone who wants to do pilot training should do before starting that a study which might function as a backup.
So from 18/19 till 22/23 you go to college or uni. If only from then when getting a job you start to save for 5-10 years you are almost even a bit late with starting aviation career. Then around 30 finished. Then fly 5-10 years this well paid GA stuff and gather slowly hrs means you are around 40 when having 1500 hrs. Let alone the fact that AGAIN there are almost no SEP MEP Biz Jet jobs or FI jobs to gather those hours. As mentioned before. Even for skydive dropping here in Germany they require 500hrs TT.
It took me like 4 years to finally land a skydive dropping job where I am very happy with. This job I do next to my daily job because you cannot life from that money.
My question remains then, HOW TO GET EXPERIENCED WHEN NOT GETTING A CHANCE TO OBTAIN EXPERIENCE?
I do agree that going straight from school to 320 or 737 is not the best transition. Better first some small Aviation, working up to small TP, bigger TP then to Jet, but as said before. Those jobs are extremely rare here in EU.
I also agree that trainings in for instance CAE or a CTC are heavily overpriced. Especially those MCC JOC's.
Back when I started I did Integrated training for 45K euros. TR 737 300-900 plus base and NG Difference Course plus hotel for 16K euros. ( I chose to do TR because the MCC JOC's offered by Kura, CTC are also around 10K. You can say there, that there is a good chance you will get a job at Easy, BACF etc. But still it is a lot of money. Keeping my rating current costs almost same as keeping MEP IR current, but MEP is pretty much useless here in EU because again read above not many jobs like that existent ). But if it was on me, I would have loved to do the road from SEP/MEP, TP to Jet, but investing in a TP rating wasnt much a plan here. ONLY when there would be a job.