Their reputation comes from the high volume of high quality and influential research that they do, as well as their deep integration with other institutions (e.g. when I was doing the Aero Astro sequence as an undergrad the head left to become head of the US Air Force; instead we had the former head of NASA. Or maybe it was the other way around).

When you look at the rankings of world universities the judgement is mostly by research output, not quality of education (though I think an MIT education is great, for the right students).

MIT is a large research organization with a small school attached: tuition revenue is less than 10% of MIT’s total revenue and education is about 15% of expenses though the web site mixes it in with other activity to make a larger number (you need the more detailed budget to dig the true number out).

Paraphrase> "engineering/stem teaches you how to think"

Surely there are papers studying that? I'm certainly interested if you know of any.

My personal experience was the opposite - engineering degree teaching maths and how to be compliant[1] to an academic system of grading, but virtually nothing on practical engineering, causality or interpersonal skills. I have noticed the same problems in many of my academic peers. I went to a university in my country that was supposed to be an excellent engineering school.

After graduation I have met great piratical engineers with zero academic skills. Two close examples: a dyslexic friend, another who left school at 14.

[1] I think this is relevant where it talks about being taught to be compliant: "Escalation Theory: Compliance, Violence, and Overachievement In Society - How Elites Cause Crime By Acing Marshmallow Tests - Conrad Bastable" https://radicalcontributions.substack.com/p/escalation-theor...

Good compromises and independence of thought are engineering skills.