I think that is mostly compensated by bachelors taking an additional year.

I don't know if what parent comment says is true at all, but if it is I think it's because historically universities didn't have a Bachelor's/Masters system in Europe. At least in Germany and the Netherlands you would study for 5 years and that is still the expectation. For less academically inclined students there are other options such as trade schools.

I don't think so, or at least it's not necessary. A lot of my CS classes (US state university) were just kind of watered down so weaker students could pass. In short, grade inflation.

Do US engineering programs actually require foreign languages and other liberal arts coursework? That wasn't the case at UVA or VT in the 90s.

Yes, most U.S. universities require a broad range of subjects outside of one's chosen major. This is a good thing in my book. You have your whole life to develop an ever-narrowing level of specialization.

No disagreement here. But then my degree is in economics, not engineering.

IIRC, UVA's engineering curriculum didn't require foreign language, had it's own writing course, most of the remaining cross-over outside engineering was hard science, with a small number of gen-ed electives (maybe 1/year or 1/semester?).

Compared to my Econ degree, which required 2 years of language, 2 semesters of writing, a mix of hard science and math, and somewhere around 4 gen-ed courses per year.

I wasn't required to take foreign language classes but my engineering degree did have a significant liberal arts core. This is pretty standard in the US from what I've seen.

Lol at my state school a cs course counted towards the foreign language credit for engineering majors... that said i did feel there was enough liberal arts requirements overall.

Yeah, many of them do.