Will say that the topic is not irrelevant to engineering, engineering is a very broad field, so while this talks about stuff that may not concern your focus in engineering, it may be very relevant to others. Otherwise, I know exactly what your talking about, I have taken so many classes that I feel do not pertain to my major, Business Administration. I have taken classes that my adviser assigned me to take that did not even count towards the major requirements to graduate.
College is a business, that not only gets a steady stream of income from customers, but also treats it's customers like employees instead. Colleges have all these backdoor deals with the textbook companies that help to make us go broke too, I can't tell you how many times I have bought the new textbook because the teacher requires you too, then I find out later that I could have gotten the same textbook 3 editions older, that had the exact same contents. I also have a friend in engineering that is going to school in NYC, and he is I think in his 7th year because they didn't accept his previous college credits, made him take classes that weren't required, and not too mention the difficulty of the math courses you have to take.
But you know what, the education you get in College is still better than what you get in K-12 in public schools. That system is totally screwed up, not only with the lack of quality in the content taught, but the teachers as well. Go watch the movie, Waiting for Superman, it is a real eye opener that talks about stuff many probably don't know about, like the "Rubber Room" in NY, and things like the "Lemon Dance" in other states.