I saw lots of ENGR majors bail out and change to NON-TECH degrees before it was all over.
This is like forcing a horse to drink water.....you can do it, but it's awfully hard.
-ea6bflyr
Gee, who could that have been?

Yes, we need technical expertise in the Navy; that's a given. But one of the reasons I bailed was due to the restrictiveness of the curriculum. Penn State is a fairly competitive engineering school. If it's any representation of engineering curricula as a whole, it is very narrow and restrictive; i.e. thou shalt take these courses in this order and no others. Don't worry about required electives and general education, "we've got that figured out for you."
The problem is that a military officer requires a skill set which is more broadly based than the civilian engineer. Our job is political and cultural in the macro sense, and technical in the micro sense. Especially given the current IA/GSA environment. I went from Aerospace Engineering to Information Sciences and Technology, and almost got out in 3 1/2 years. But if I ever get IAed to East Durkastan, I will get more mileage out of the Islamic Civilization and Arabic electives I was able to take than I could out of an Advanced Regonkulator Design Theory "tech elective."
I think the proper course load for the aspiring officer lies somewhere in the
via media between the BS liberal arts degree and the BS engineering degree (pardon the pun). ea6bflyr will also recall a classmate of mine who was Battalion CO and a chemical engineer. Between that and ROTC, he had the equivalent of a 20+ credit load every semester to get out of school on time. Granted, he went subs, and probably was served very well by all the engineering in his case. But nucs have a reason for that. Is this what we want out of all our officers just to have the option of MAYBE sending them all to nuc school? I think this bureaucratic way of thinking is too prevalent in the military under the guise of "leaning forward."
I would submit that more leavening with humanities, specifically military history, naval history, and maybe even a little philosophy or polisci is a better bet in this day and age. We already make the basketweavers take calculus, chemistry, and calc-based physics. What more do they need? DiffEq? Calc III? Just because it's worth doing, it's not worth overdoing. One random LT's opinion.