Its almost eerie (in a positive way) that I see this post right when I was thinking about something along the lines of how an effective engineering course should be structured. Only recently I developed an interest in the classics (greek and roman) and also started reading Milton's "Paradise lost", and Seneca's "On the shortness of life". Two things stood out in a lot of these works - 1) the richness of content - meaning how inevitably it makes you think hard while reading, and 2) the usage of language in a way that makes you see the language in a whole new light (especially in Milton's classic - English never looked so beautiful!!). During the process of reading these classics, I was convinced that a 3-4 year study of an engineering (or science) discipline would only be vastly improved if the subject matter had its share of philosophy and literature (call it "lit-phil"). I would go so far as to say that it should be a 50-50 split. There There will always be a debate as to what works should be included, but the amount of quality work is so vast that being selective would not matter. We can argue that to incorporate this into the same 3-4 years of study, we could eliminate some of the engineering course material to make way. Do we really need all those engineering subjects in that much detail?
So then should be an arts degree at all? I would say yes, and thats only for people who just feel overwhelmed by science or engineering (who I come across aplenty) and prefer to study only the arts. If there should be an arts-only degree, why would I propose that engineering be always accompanied by study of lit-phil? Simply because I believe that a mind that needs to grasp engineering has to be somewhat prepared by philosophy and literature and whetted constantly by it during the study.
Now, the only kicker is that at the age of doing a bachelors (which is between 17-19 and 21-23 for the majority), the average engineering bachelor student would not be mature enough to appreciate a healthy dosage of lit-phil. They would inevitably ask why they are being subjected to something totally unrelated - whereas they do not understand that the subject matter is slowly working on their brain in the background (if they care to put an effort into it).
Hope this does not come across as a rant against engineering. I studied electrical engineering and have utmost regard for the field (much more so than "software engineering" - and I am not talking about computer science and engineering here). But I believe its crucial to pay attention to how we inculcate that engineering knowledge into minds in general. And develop engineers that are not afraid to think and contemplate.