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.
As a PhD research engineer, I hear you about universities placing all students in the English/History/Philosophy classes to pay the bills. However, I am not so down on that aspect of it, unless it becomes simple leftist indoctrination.
Decades ago, when I was sitting in those classes, there was still value in those classes (reading government philosophy like Rousseau, etc., foreign literature, even English, and especially American history). Over the years, that exposure has served me well (and sparked hobby interests, too), so I don’t regret it. But you may be right that, in this day in age, those classes have become worthless attempts at spewing leftist ideology. But one could argue, in that case, that you have chosen the wrong university.