Perhaps. That's what brought my main point of the feeling being "entrapment" (i don't know the exact term for this sort of phenomenon).

Hey, did our system utterly fail you? Submit yourself to us and we'll fix the problem we continue to propogate! You don't even need to complete the educational system we outlined anymore, just be a warm body to throw at future battles for oil.

There's less incentive to provide proper housing when you can instead put your citizens in barracks.