A metric that might work in the future is to look at employment and job satisfaction.
> You just need to trust people to act vaguely in their own interest, and society's interest, most of the time and to trust that things will work out.
Sure. And I want free college, and progressive taxation.
I also advise that we do a far better job of publishing and thinking about career opportunities and satisfaction. Maybe even to the extent that schools should seriously consider whether it's responsible to accept X majors.
It's fun to think about how screwed up a society would become if it did simpleminded, authoritarian things like reduce the number of seats for education students because teachers defaulted on their student loans at a higher rate than business students, and opened up a corresponding number of spots for business students. There are so many factors affecting that default rate other than society's need for graduates of a degree program...
Here's an idea: make sure people who are intellectually capable of succeeding in a degree program can choose the major they want. Support them financially if they need it. Full stop.
> I also advise that we do a far better job of publishing and thinking about career opportunities and satisfaction. Maybe even to the extent that schools should seriously consider whether it's responsible to accept X majors.
So much of what you're talking about already exists.
That's why I said "do a far better job of ... thinking about"
Are you proposing a system where a school would accept you, decide there were too many of your preferred major, and kick you out or choose another?
The other option would be to force 17/18 year olds to choose their future careers while in high school.
That happens all the time.
So, yes.
You cannot calculate how many art history majors the world needs. You just need to trust people to act vaguely in their own interest, and society's interest, most of the time and to trust that things will work out.
Consider the important exceptions to this approach, where we try to match the number of students to demand. You can sort of calculate how many doctors the world needs, since everything involved (cost of services, number of patients, number of doctors, demography, doctor salary, yadda yadda) is objectively measured. We still manage to get that wrong, and there's a shortage. (or is there?)
The notion that you're going to be able to somehow be able to determine the market demand for graduates of the kind of degree program where people will move into a wide variety of jobs, like art history for one, is pure fiction if we can't even get medicine right. Of course if you're going to form a dictatorship of some kind you're obligated to try, but it will be one of the many things about your dictatorship that does not work very well.