Oh but it totally will works. Economic incentives change decisions at the margins... sure, many won't switch from philosophy to engineering, but faced with incr

Oh but it totally will works. Economic incentives change decisions at the margins... sure, many won't switch from philosophy to engineering, but faced with increased costs (for example), many will. My mom back (in the USSR, a slightly different system where the number of spots + level of desirability, rather than the cost, determined how hard it was to get a particular degree) wanted to be an archaeologist, but the competition to get into the relevant school was too high, so upon failing to get in she chose to not wait another year and have another shot, and instead became an electrical engineer (also a BS/MS position). Nothing would have prevented the Soviet planners from creating more spots to train archaeologists at the expense of electrical engineers. If the banks in the US flat out refused to provide loans for degrees in say literature, much fewer people would get these degrees.