I guess I was pretty lucky then... (Score 1)

I went to university in Aberdeen, Scotland, and I found that the curriculum for an engineering degree was pretty well-rounded.

The first two years of the 4-year Honours degree were general to ALL engineers, so you didn't have to lock in to a path until you'd tried a bit of everything- from Fluid Mechanics to Microprocessors to Statics/Dynamics....

As well as this, we had exposure to the 'practical' or 'dirty' ends of the discipline. We used to get sent to the local college to learn how to make concrete beams, solder, weld (Arc and Oxy-Acetelene), use theodolites, metalwork... This was in addition to doing technical drawing (by hand and using AUTOCAD), and the regular labs for fluids, materials, etc..., plus fun things like making trebouchets from balsa wood and having competitions to see who could fire their missiles the furthest..

I think that this approach certainly helped me in the workplace as I've been able to work comfortably on multi-disciplined projects and have a much better understanding of how the theoretical standards/tolerances translate into the real world.

I don't know what the degree is like now, but having compared educations with my counterparts across the globe (and reading the comments here), I think it would be a real shame if they changed the format.

Locking children in to making career choices when they've still so much to experience seems pretty crazy to me. I may have been taken down a much less satisfying path if I'd made my decisions based on the few careers I knew about at a young age.