No, it's mainly a question of making sure graduates aren't people who "don't know what they don't know". What I mean by this is that when you come across some

No, it's mainly a question of making sure graduates aren't people who "don't know what they don't know". What I mean by this is that when you come across some common engineering problem, if you've never seen it before, you'll spend a lot of time trying to re-invent the wheel, probably very badly. That's why engineering programs spend so much time on fundamentals and so much time on studying because when you hit a similar problem you're supposed to have a switch go off and say wait, I've seen something similar before, know where to head to do your research and find a solid answer. So yes, the cramming and huge amount of coursework is "mostly useless" but in reality just having gone through all that work turns out to be a real boon later in life. (I went through a Computer Science/Software System degree but have many SOEN/Mech/Civil/Indu friends.)