If students could, as you say, “weasel” out of loans, then I guarantee you the ebonics departments would all dry up because no bank would put their money at risk subsidizing it.
A lot of garbage departments and degrees would be gone without general education requirements. They can’t entice people to show up for art, history, philosophy, and liberal arts classes, so they’ve devised general education requirements to force you to go. It’s a total crock. Those departments can’t survive without butts in those seats, so they force it.
I went to school to be an engineer, anything else is a waste of time. I’m sure I’m going to get the standard litany “you need to learn more about the world, life doesn’t just exist in your major”. Put it to music, that’s a journey of self-discovery that I’ll make on my own (or not), I don’t need some idiot stuffed-shirt school administrator to force that on me at their prices. I learned more about the world from my US Navy enlistment before college than that university ever taught me.