[kedean]

If you require students to spend X years working in Y, then it's not a subsidy anymore, it sounds a lot more like a scholarship. What you're suggesting would have to somehow be structured to let students choose not to accept the agreement, and at that point its not "for everyone" anymore.

This sort of agreement definitely does exist, though. My sister in law went to med school under one requiring her to work a number of years in rural parts of the state after residency.