After all, STEM fields have a built in reality check for one's thoughts. If you design an airplane and it doesn't fly, you're forced to develop critical thinking skills so that doesn't happen again. Physical reality isn't going to bend to your thoughts.
One of the most important things STEM provides one is the most important tool to determine truth from garbage - the scientific method. This is applicable far beyond just the physical world.
Another thing I learned from STEM is the opposite of compartmentalization - I learned how fundamentally similar hydraulics, electronics, mechanics, etc., are. The rules, processes, math, methods of solving problems, are all transferrable between the disciplines.
I took an economics course once, and was a bit puzzled by two pages of equations in the textbook until I realized that they were doing the equivalent of a simple derivative. The textbook was written under the assumption that economics majors didn't know calculus. I thought it was rather sad.
[1] This would likely involve a lot of pinning down just what STEM curricula and just what alternative curricula you are considering, unless you're able to establish there is no overlap in the distributions - a premise which I doubt.