Yes it's called RoT, or Rate over Time. You become subject to RoT when you hit 70.1 skill. From that point:
<ul>70.1 - 80: Skill can be gained at 5 minute intervals, daily cap of 3.6.
80.1 - 98: Skill can be gained at 10 minute intervals, daily cap of 2.1.
98.1 - 120: Skill can be gained at 15 minute intervals, daily cap of 2.1.[/list]These caps apply globally to all skills in RoT, and not just each one. So, you can't gain 3.6 in wrestling and 2.1 in magery daily as both would be counting toward your daily cap.
Basically this translates to it taking months to get a skilled character on the shard, but on the plus side is means predictable gains.
As resources can be scarce on the shard, and often cost more then on production shards with gold becoming more difficult to come by, RoT can save you time spent training and gold as you know exactly when you'll get a guaranteed gain.
Quite a few people on Siege aren't too happy with the daily caps for RoT though and believe it may be preventing new players from being as willing to join the shard, as it is in your case evidently. I definitely think they're onto something with this and there's a small chance that the developers may revisit this area in the future as people have spoken out.