I asked a question on this in the devChat as part of a general "we were told nothing but recruiting changed, but..(insert things like strange sub patterns, quicker rates of growth, etc., here)...are happening."
They said the only changes were to the recruiting code but that they'd look and make sure that didn't cause some inadvertent ripple effect.
I definitely think something changed. My first "real" team in 3.0 just blew away my previous "best team rating gain for a season" record by nearly 20 percent (still a couple games left, not sure how many points will get added over those two games)