If you meant those who drive locomotives, then I withdraw my suspicion. They are important.
...during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.
If anything, I've seen more engineers shedding their engineer mindset, but that's another conversation. (Disclaimer: this side remark is not about "fake news" or the 2016 election)
Not at all. I've known many people with an engineer mindset that don't have a degree. And the opposite too.