Don't get me wrong, I was a pretty loud critic. Right now I work on embedded ARM where most COM vendors are still - in 2015 - selling brand new kit which can barely run kernel 3.2, let alone 3.7 required for cgroups/systemd - most systemd fanatics try to tell me to compile from mainline kernel sources, which ignores the fact that these things are all one-of-a-kind once-off type systems where I'd have to port the shitty once-off BSP code which barely made it over the wall in the first place (which I have done - and took weeks on my last attempt, due to shitty quirky b0rked interrupts on the MMC interface for that board), not just "yolo, git pull && recompile dawg # to hell with re-certification and customer revalidation" that web hipsters seem to assume is the case.
But honestly, the technical committee in Debian were the ones we entrusted to make this kind of decision, so it's a meta-lesson in community participation. You can make all the RedHat conspiracies you want but at the end of the day the technical committee volunteers decided it was too much work (read: they didn't have the help like you or I around) to take on spinning a distro with the option to install without systemd.
So all I'm saying is that the Linux ecosystem is shit, but we have only ourselves to blame.
As someone who went to a relatively unknown university (internationally at least), I can also say that the only part of my degree that I simply had to accept with blind faith ("unless you've done maths post-grad, we don't have time to teach why all this is so and how it's derived") was much of two control systems theory subjects. The rest, I could usually derive from first principles. We certainly also studied semiconductors (Si, SiC, GaN - in conjuction with a quantum mechanics subject) such that we could model transistors and other elements from physical fundamentals: exploring different quite complex models and computational approaches, down to simplified formulae, when and which to use for convenience or accuracy.
I get the point you're trying to make, but I'd say most good engineering programmes are throwing up disclaimers in the course material whenver a "recipe" (as opposed to principles) is being taught due to lack of time. Good courses should provide caveats around such things, and make the students understand that they're applying something they don't understand. And hopefully also show what branches of knowledge a "faith item" is derived from so that students can explore on their own if they wish (I hope mose EEs are being taught how to teach themselves and know the limits of their own knowledge). In order to give the physical sciences and mathematics the depth that you would apparently approve of, it would squeeze out so much of the EE domain knowledge and analytical/process/systematics part of the discipline I'm not sure you'd be left with much other than an applied science degree.
An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.