I keep hearing this flood meme. I'm not sure I buy into it.
It may conceivably devalue the degree itself by making it less uncommon, but skills likely lose value at a much lower rate. There are also network effects - the pace of modern science and engineering goes almost entirely on the fact that we have a great many people working at once and sharing results.
There's also nothing to stop you from studying engineering then getting a job which uses a completely different skill set. A liberal arts degree is not a career training program in most cases. Opportunity cost is one big reason why this is less acceptable than it could be. However, it may be that different program models make different revenue models more viable, driving down the opportunity cost.
Of course, none of this addresses the quality problem. It's one thing to say "throw more engineers" but it's another entirely to create more good engineers.
It may conceivably devalue the degree itself by making it less uncommon, but skills likely lose value at a much lower rate. There are also network effects - the pace of modern science and engineering goes almost entirely on the fact that we have a great many people working at once and sharing results.
There's also nothing to stop you from studying engineering then getting a job which uses a completely different skill set. A liberal arts degree is not a career training program in most cases. Opportunity cost is one big reason why this is less acceptable than it could be. However, it may be that different program models make different revenue models more viable, driving down the opportunity cost.
Of course, none of this addresses the quality problem. It's one thing to say "throw more engineers" but it's another entirely to create more good engineers.