What I was suggesting is that 'black and white' often leads to a draconian "fix". (Baby versus bathwater)
The complexity of an engineering degree is real but it is not broad enough to see those shades of gray or to necessarily recognize the best answer to problems outside of the specialty. ("Elegant" equals "simple" and sometimes simplistic.)
I'm certainly not pushing for more liberal arts majors or a move away from technical matters. I am glad that I went to school when basic education (maybe through 10th) had broad goals and specialization came after some opportunity to build a foundation.
“The complexity of an engineering degree is real but it is not broad enough to see those shades of gray or to necessarily recognize the best answer to problems outside of the specialty.”
You know, I see that line of opinion a lot. Sure, there are some narrow engineers. They are the media’s stereotype.
In college (before moving on), I took more of some “broad” subjects than most majors in the subject. Took graduate level philosophy and business courses. The non-graduate level ones were “blow offs” - read the book, show up to required classes if any, and blow the curve. Those courses were also BORING in terms of depth.
Engineers’ course hour requirements were more than 20% over most other majors’ and included a lot of “general education” requirements. Many if not most of my classmates took advantage of that to learn a lot outside of engineering. (Now the nerds did take just the easy ones and didn’t learn much.)
Also, anyone who doesn’t think there are shades of grey in engineering is clueless. The math to be exact is impossible for even many seemingly simple problems, and that’s even if you have access to a supercomputer. Much of engineering is knowing what parts of the grey areas you can estimate and what parts you cannot. That takes something called “judgement.”
I’ve known more plenty of engineers with a broader understanding of history and philosophy than many philosophy (usually clueless), polisci (more clueless), english, and even history majors. Now, I’ve also known plenty of very one-dimensional engineers aka classic nerds, but they were not the majority.
But our “culture” treats engineers as dorks, so no wonder that’s the accepted view.
PS You want narrow? Talk to your average leftist indoctrinated polisci, journalism (shudder), or lib arts major. They think that their thinking is broad, but it’s generally narrow party line pseudo-marxism or pure marxism with little bredth or awareness. (Again, there are many exceptions.)