You are absolutely correct, and I also feel that way sometimes.
2-3 of my classmates from college, who left the engineering field even before graduating are doing very well, financially. One was a trainee at PriceWaterhouse (there was no Coopers yet back then!) in our junior year. The other started working in banking and now is in finances.
Those who are still in the engineering field, but are making money by the truckloads, left Brazil some time after graduation and are working in aerospace engineering in the US, Germany and France.
Although I went to engineering school, I never worked with engineering. My day job is as a systems analyst and MS SQL Server DBA. The engineering knowledge helps me every single day, however.