I take it you are nothing more than a draftsman. Nothing against that, but one needs an understanding of what they are drawing to draw something efficient and useful.
They will help them be a professional engineer with some understanding of the total market for their skills. Designing a system with no understanding of installation and maintenance vs. designing with that understanding can be the difference between being retained and being redundant.
Just receiving a degree is only part of any profession. Again, this student was working for someone who was not only a professional engineer, but someone with practical skills. Moaning about the poor job market while being narrowly focused only upon degree requirements is rather counter-productive in today’s world.
Are all engineering graduates assured that they will never have to fall back on practical skills to stay employed in a tight job market? It is precisely this sort of attitude that frustrates the older professionals whose jobs the young graduates hope to someday fill. Why do you think this boss was amazed at the lacks of his intern? Why do you think he went out of his way to add to the student’s education? Perhaps the employed professional engineer knows something about his profession?
This doesn’t even take into account the possibility of a global market collapse and subsequent long global depression. Being able to shift one’s professional weight and having many strings to one’s professional bow cannot ever be a detriment to employment.