There is some truth to this, in that advanced courses in the physical sciences that I’ve taken (e.g. in chemistry, math, and physics) tend to have substantially more intellectual depth than the conceptually simple but extremely tedious upper division engineering courses. I’ve also seen some genuinely terrible students (i.e. the kind that couldn’t even properly do the kind of work you’d expect of a high school graduate) that graduated with the rest of the class. I know for a fact (from talking to them) that cheating was involved, along with egregious abuse of well-intentioned lenience by professors in grading criteria.
Perhaps they did go on to become working engineers; I really never cared enough to follow up. So I suppose it is possible that anyone could do the same and become an engineer. But I wouldn’t want my bridges built by someone who cheated to get the qualifications that prove that they are capable of being reliable for that task. I would very much not recommend that route to anyone else either.
That said, engineering jobs are a lot easier to do than they are to get. Probably a result of many years of oversupply of BS-educated engineering majors.