Engineering and business majors? I generally agree.
Although I could never set up a little political science shop on the corner and make a living, the older I get the more I value the traditional liberal arts education I received at UF. Being required to take sociology and history and psychology and humanities credits with my poli-sci courses - I feel that gave me a better chance to learn critical thinking and to more easily understand when you are being bullshitted in a political situation. Granted, job opportunities were more law school or rental car counter or barista due to that.
I remember talking to an engineer neighbor a long time ago about some Charlie Daniels political screed that the neighbor loved. I laughed and asked him if he knew anything about rhetoric or if he knew anything about logical fallacies.
I told him he should study rhetoric so he could instantly recognize things in the Charlie Daniels manifesto (that contained several “no true Scotsman”statements, and referenced “wine drinking liberals”, etc.)
I told him once you recognize how rhetoric and fallacies were put out there to deceive and manipulate you, you will instantly have a better idea who to trust and what information to discard or what to pursue in a validity search.
To be clear, I’m not saying that is the only way to be a critical thinker, or that only people with a liberal arts education are critical thinkers. But it has been my experience that having the skill to solve engineering problems with physics and mathematics (courses I could never pass in 1000 years) does not translate as well to understand when you are being manipulated and grifted by people like Trump.
Through no fault of their own - or their education - they are more susceptible to being victims of the type of rhetoric they often fall for. Because they are simply unaware that rhetoric is a system and a skill employed to convince and manipulate people - using specific techniques that have been identified for thousands of years and are still very effective.
Even at the high school level there should be mandatory courses on rhetoric to hopefully reduce the number of gullible people falling for what is obvious bullshit - at least obvious bullshit that is readily apparent to a lot of other people.