Some discounts are still significant (33% for railway and mass transit). But I don't think that it would be enough to go through trouble of applying to university. You would be kicked out for not passing first semester anyway. What destroyed recruitment strategies for less popular faculties was army. When army abandoned mandatory conscription many less popular faculties where quite surprised by dramatic drop in number of candidates. People used to apply to escape military service and some of them actually finished degrees despite silly motivation to apply in the beginning.