Not afterwards…but during there is some weird intellectual hierarchy. I don’t really even remember it happening as much in HS. Maybe I was different because I was more likely to praise one of my friends who is a religion major. He was a transfer student with the most ridiculous ways of thinking and like many transfers (for some reason, they seem more “excited” about the course offerings and instructors that a school more selective than the one that they transferred from is. They more willingly take challenging courses as a whole from what I have seen. Often transfers from similar caliber schools transfer for social reasons and thus don’t tend to do the same) I’ve seen, took advantage of academic opps thrown at him even when they were challenging. He attempted to take a drugs and behavior class for fun for example. It didn’t work out that well grade wise but it is the interest that counts. He was regarded by some faculty members of religion as “one of the best they’ve seen in a decade or so” and having conversations with him was always amazing because he was just as willing to learn from me and my friends (mostly sciences) as we were from him. It is no surprise that he will be off for a masters in the philosophy of science at Cambridge in October. I try to remember my relatively recent UG days for my interaction with folks like that guy. Though surprisingly many of the graduate students I’ve met in my chemistry program are as well-rounded as I am if not more so talking non-STEM with them is always awesome as well.
As for undervalue of engineers, may have to do with how many people imagine it as manual labor for which there seems to be a distaste for. And scientists, there seems to be this thing in the media where often what we (I will claim to be one as I do aim to be a professional at it one day lol) do is not useful or practical. I remember some of what was said by politicians when government funded research was being slashed…with them highlighting “useless” projects as the reason why federal money was being wasted. And as always, I would argue that even students in STEM classes may come to undervalue what science actually is.
As a biology major, it seemed many students viewed science as a series of facts and algorithmic processes as opposed to a series of processes (or even a way of thought) that are supposed to answer open ended questions. Often textbooks de-emphasize processes (like how things were discovered, the data that led to a certain conclusions. Often it is “this is how it works, accept it!”) and experimental underpinnings and they also tend to gloss over nuanced evidence. For example, it wasn’t until I took the graduate molec cell/biochemistry course that I learned that semi-conservative DNA replication was not actually fully supported by the original experiments. The experiments where they just concluded it was most “probable” actually left open another seemingly viable model. Usually, even when this experiment is taught to UGs, the result that led to some doubt is glossed over or just not addressed. Again, the way life sciences is often taught, I’m not surprised that people in it rather just take their content knowledge where the money is, medicine (though you could risk it and try for biotech companies or pharmaceuticals).