There's a more subtle form of 'make' where you set conditions to induce a result. The fact is, giving anything away for free will increase its consumption.
Yes it will. But that doesn't mean that “making students read” doesn't arouse a very different impression. “Making students do homework.” does not imply “Making it free for them to do it.”.
Like just having a broom in the house makes my kids sweep the floors? There's no way to interpret the headline that makes any sense as truth.