English majors (and other liberal arts majors) do not build "critical thinking" any better than science majors. That skillset comes down to your natural intelligence and curiosity.
But you do spend a half decade practicing writing convincing essays regarding said thinking and that too has value. There's no use being able to say something is wrong if you can't get others to agree.
It's funny because at least where I live, critical thinking is (rightly) associated with STEM. STEM is also harder for affluent people to get in without putting in work.
I think you're expressing an unhealthy resentment here. I work as a SWE and I appreciate the critical thinking involved in the types of problems I get to solve. I'm also in graduate school for something that often borders on humanities and I am amazed at the complexity of thought that goes into the field due to how limitless the scope is and the way in which the humanity of the field allows anybody to participate. The STEM students I teach often struggle with exactly that, as well as with having well-developed communication skills. Turns out that choosing either STEM or humanities and forsaking the other leaves students deficient.
> I think you're expressing an unhealthy resentment here.
Just an observation. In a developing country anyone with better academic performance is compelled to pursue fields that pay well. So that statistically skews the other fields to people of lower academic performance up to high school. Academic performance correlates to cognitive abilities.
STEM grads I see around me have no problem with communication or anything a humanities degree claims to "teach". I think it all boils down to people and their cognitive abilities.
Second factor is subjectiveness of humanities fields; in STEM fields there are often objective measurements. It's much easier to bullshit your way to and through a non-STEM degree, especially when you have money and background.
Edit: I have heard "humanities" as solution to engineers not writing proper docs or bug reports. That is missing the real reason, which is pretty boring. We don't have conceptual foundations of many things we use. Fresh grads even more so, due to abysmal education system.