You see exploitation, I see a market signal to high schoolers and undergraduates telling them we have enough graduate-level geographers, encouraging them to pursue something else and eventually making us all more prosperous in the future.

Sure, just two different ways of looking at the same thing. I personally view all employment as fundamental exploitation. Obviously you only hire employees with the intention to extract more value than what you give back in compensation. Some employers are downright extreme in this exercise.

I'm not against all of it. I just appreciate viewing things from as many perspectives as possible, uncomfortable or not.

What's a better system? About the time that Marx was formulating his ideas on society and markets, the US was just about finishing up several decades of government businesses that kept losing money against free market ran businesses even though they had the weight of the US treasury behind them. I doubt anyone would disagree that the reason the government businesses failed was that they were not sensitive to market signals and kept investing people's labor poorly.

Socialism need not be paired with a command economy. Capitalism plus redistribution works better.

Because as we know, high-schoolers are really good at labour-market analysis.

Maybe there should be a specialist who's role is to counsel students through these decisions and provide guidance?

Is it a reliable signal?

To everyone who says "If money is important to me, what should I major it," it's a great signal.

To people who say "What's my passion in life and the rest of the world should subsidize it," not so much.

sort of like how bandit activity is a signal that a road should be avoided

I see cheap labor on mechanical turk woohoo upvotes are in my future for 1 cent!