This is a good point. I never understood why lenders couldn't give lower interest rates, or more favorable terms to people pursuing math and science, as opposed to degrees with less earning potential; however if you look at professional degrees, you can see wage loss and unemployment in those industries. Plus, if you funneled more people into math and science, the colleges DON'T want that, because those are expensive degree programs to run. A university pays more to operate their science department than a social science department. In addition, they push for less qualified people to be professors now, and try to avoid tenure, and you can't pay a chemistry PhD less, they will just go use their actual degree in the private sector. Administrative costs in universities have risen too during decades of believing that MBAs and business types could more effectively run a university, which most professors now agree has been a mistake, as the first MBA hired two others, who hired two others, and there is this big byzantine structure now that use to be literally run by fewer people, many of whom were professors doing the job for no extra pay. There was no big fallout as the system grew, because of the easy loans, and the MBA types would build structures that were meant to attract students (special gyms, stadiums, game rooms), the focused move from "what education value can our school provide the student?" to "how many students can I get to pay tuition, and how many will pursue majors in departments that cost me less per student."

Overall, I feel the elite thought this would be a solution to the loss of jobs when they went full throttle on free trade. They knew a huge employment problem loomed for the young generation, so they thought college would be a stop gap, and wistfully believed in a world in which we needed more professionals. If you look at law for example, huge increase in law schools, while that industry is automatized to have computers do more work, and a shift to using less educated people to do work that use to be done by lawyers. There is a similar movement happening in the medical industry with less qualified nurses, physicians assistants instead of doctors seeing patients, and in most hospitals, a doctor is told a given amount of time they can spend with a patient to be "most efficient" by people with no medical training deciding these metrics. The future is you getting less, while paying more.