Most engineers don't work on projects with as straightforward outcomes as "flies" or "doesn't fly", even in college. Even if they did, not everything that falls

Most engineers don't work on projects with as straightforward outcomes as "flies" or "doesn't fly", even in college. Even if they did, not everything that falls in the "flies" category is equally good. Deciding which is the most good for a given application can often be as qualitative as you perceive liberal arts. Furthermore, there are many engineers who have made careers out of doing little more than "criticizing without a mechanism for determining the correct way". To argue from the other side, the point of liberal arts isn't to make you argue both sides of an issue equally. And telling a good essay from a bad essay can often be easier than telling a good airplane design from a bad one. (Full disclosure: I'm an engineer and I only took 2 semesters of humanities classes in college.)