I strongly believe that pushing normies into STEM was a net-negative for engineering.
Engineering and science were the fields that people with genuine interest and/or undiagnosed Aspergers gravitated towards and were professions where those types of individuals could apply their talents more naturally. The meme of the engineer personality has allot of overlap with Aspergers personality traits and quirks.
By telling everyone that the only way to make good money was STEM and ramrodding it down the throat of people who wouldn't have immediately chosen it, I think it's degraded the quality of the engineering workforce at large as well as the result of said workforce's work product.

Maybe I'm overreaching with the Aspergers part, but I'm very certain that the insane promotion of STEM has ended up damaging STEM instead. These aren't career fields for normies and the influx of normies is damaging our ability to build quality stuff.