Paying for results sounds efficient, until you start thinking about what those results should be and how you'd prevent policy makers anyone politicizing them and educational institutions from gaming them.

You may have a point with it's better to pay for results. But that lead to an chicken-egg-problem. Without chicken no eggs and without eggs no chickens.

So, how to achieve good results, if they are needed upfront to get subsidies and subsidies are needed to offer opportunities to achieve results?

It's not always better to pay for results. Paying for effort would also allow the headcount and university size to be regulated by the market. If you are a university no one wants to adhere to, then you also would not get any subsidies and have an incentive to become better in whatever you teach, without questioning first, where to get the money from.

I see it as a try to remove people without money from education. That fits with all the wisdom trump is producing every single day. Stupid.