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.