[UnpossibleJim]

I'm outside Academia so I'm asking, but you don't think that the idea of "Engineering doesn't matter" has started to change with the introduction of AI and ML into business and the popularization of CS in modern culture?

[enviclash]

While I find your reasoning reasonable, I will provide an example from the other side: a mentor who later got the Nobel Prize told me "the first time you study something you should get right the order of magnitude, the second time you should get right the decimals, and the third time you give it to the engineers". This is how they think in top level academia.