Perhaps an anecdotal story from the floors of a notable UAV manufacturer.
I came out of the field after an injury as was working as the senior propulsion R&D technician for a major UAV company. Because of my knowledge, aviation history, and work experience I was the primary SME responsible for propulsion related UAV incident reviews, developing reports for engineering to conduct final review, and because of my field history was often consulted on aero related issues. My salary level was considerably higher than the average company engineer.
We often accepted engineering interns to mentor that desired "hand's on" experience to assist furthering their education, and the last pair of applicants prior to my retirement were to be shared within the department. They were in front of a few of the engineers and techs one morning to determine where they might best fit and where they would prefer to work. Both were female, one was an advanced engineering student looking to (seriously) become a rocket scientist, having already obtained a couple of degrees, one in mechanical engineering. The other was an engineering student at Embry-Riddle specializing in UAV technology. She made it a point to let everyone know she was a "UAV pilot" and that's what she wanted to be. Neither knew of my background in either UAV's, full scale as a commercial pilot and instructor, or many years of giant scale fixed wing RC history. In discussion, the Embry-Riddle student was very quick to tell me why she found no potential benefit to spending any time in the Propulsion Lab, and there was no possibility the work performed there could ever benefit her career path. In fact, she pretty much viewed my position as a technician as being someone far below her station as an engineering student. She questioned why I believed she would expand her scope of UAV comprehension by becoming involved in any way in the Propulsion Lab.
When asked what kind of experience she had as a "UAV pilot" she responded she had about 10-15 hours of time operating a multirotor. She looked pretty dumb when informed, in front of others, that her perception of herself was pretty skewed and that she probably knew very little about what she wanted to be. When queried about how I might know of such things she was just a little surprised to learn that I was also a UAV pilot with several thousand hours as PIC across two military/commercial UAV's, had deployed 6 times to war time environments to set up and operate UAV's for the military, had taught UAV operations to military agencies at home, developed specific operations and maintenance practices critical to a particular type of UAV engine, developed a large performance increase for another UAV engine, was a subject matter expert, and full scale flight instructor. In the process she was informed that a critical part of becoming any kind of pilot was developing comprehension of everything that applies to the construction, maintenance, and operation of the aircraft, and those that best understood them were typically the ones that best operated them. This is especially relevant in commercial operations. Needless to say she failed to measure up and did not do all that well in the department she elected to attach to.
The one working towards becoming a rocket scientist turned out to have a very open mind and was willing to learn things with great diversity, which she stated after the term of her internship had benefitted her greatly.
The reason for sharing the above is that it was common for engineering students to know a heck of a lot less than they thought they did, and until they had actual experience with something everything they thought they "knew" wasn't "known" at all. With the exception of just a few, most of them lacked the passion that will cause them to excel.
