I understand the motivation behind this approach, but I think it's problematic on a few levels. First, you'd end up cutting plenty of interesting and important fields of study that don't lead to a career path. I highly doubt that classics would survive, for instance, as it's already on life support at most of the universities with which I'm familiar. History, philosophy, anthropology--these don't tend to lead to consistent employment, but that doesn't mean we should cut them. Contrary to what some critics of the university think, a career is not the sole (or even the most important) purpose of a college education.

Second, it's a bit odd to cut popular majors, since these are the courses of study that people want to pursue. They also bring in a disproportionate amount of tuition dollars, which essentially allows them to underwrite the smaller but still important majors that aren't as popular. Cut psychology and sociology, and you don't have as much money for the other majors. Moreover, If I'm understanding the argument correctly, you'd essentially have a rationed number of slots for psychology majors, and everyone else would just lose out. I've seen what happens when departments don't have enough staffing to handle demand; you get overfilled classes and people who graduate in five years instead of four.

As a side note, psychology may be more useful than you might think, though it depends a lot on how the student approaches the major. Psychology majors, particularly if they take neuroscience classes, are in a good position to pursue further study in medicine, nursing, physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, counseling of all sorts, research of various sorts...it's a long list. Yes, people can squeak by even if they spend most of their time on the beach, but that shouldn't be taken as an indictment of the major as a whole.

Overall, this approach seems like a strange thing for conservatives to endorse. It would reduce the pursuit of traditional fields of study. Instead of allowing course offerings to fluctuate with demand, it would instead require university officials to exert quite a lot of top-down control, rationing the amount of available courses on the theory that they have the knowledge and authority to make these decisions. Sounds like the good old five-year plan approach, though this would probably require something more like a ten- or twenty-year plan. I'm not sure why you'd trust anyone, particularly university officials, with power of this sort. Certainly students should *have* data on employment rates to help them make decisions--but ultimately, the decision must be theirs.