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Well, you have pointed up a related, but separate issue; people who somehow think that a engineering degree is the goal, separate and apart from the study and knowledge it takes to achieve it.
In my retirement, I work part time as an instructor, teaching primarily PLC techniques and programming. Every now and again we get into a discussion that involves some sort of engineering calculation, for example, we might be discussing the issue of leakage current through an output module. I am absolutely flabbergasted at the number of recent graduates who do not remember the formula for capacitive reactance, because they "learned it four years ago," or even better,, those who aren't comfortable with numbering systems and codes. I would guess that 10% of the students I get are comfortable with the fact that FFFFh equals 1111 1111 1111 1111 binary and -1 decimal, without using a calculator to do the conversions.
Another interesting attitude I frequently encounter, which may be peculiar to the PLC situation, is the desire to fit square pegs into round holes because "I really understand square pegs." Most American PLCs use, among others, a form of programming called ladder logic, which is dead simple and is in reality "Visual Boolean." Ladder is great for what used to be called "Mickey Mouse Logic," manipulating messy truth tables one bit at a time. Many PLCs also support other languages; structured text, which is frequently similar to Pascal (!!), Function Blocks, Grafcet, Sequential Function Chart, etc. etc. Each has a sweet spot. What is absolutely amazing is the number of recent graduates who want to do everything in Structured Text, because they are good at C++. The fact that there is a simpler, more efficient way is rejected, because it involves learning something new.
Now, this is not to condemn all recent graduates. Many are indeed excellent. Now that I think of it, I guess what I am complaining about is the number of recent graduates who apparently studied "to pass the test," rather than to learn the material, and who got away with it for four years.