If paying the cost is the issue then maybe the solution would be to have employers that benefit from having fully educated/trained potential new employees help the shoulder the cost. The way to do that would not be to leverage a tax on employers but expand the number of co-op programs and ensure that the students are payed sufficiently to help offset the cost of their tuition. That way it’s a win-win. Employers only pay to train students that they could potentially hire and more students would be funneled towards practical degrees. The only downside is that it could possibly lead to the demise of humanities programs. One way to solve that problem though would be to require students regardless of degree to take a number of humanities/arts/social studies courses so while they wouldn’t necessarily be majoring in those disciplines there would still be enough students taking courses to support maintaining those departments.