On that last point Blacksheep, I agree totally - my only point would be that it's far from limited to maintenance. A friend of mine, who is a highly respected (ex-industry) academic and writer of textbooks put his finger on it in my opinion, when he said that the basic problem is a loss of concentration upon the flight vehicle.
If you start at the vehicle (be it an airliner, a light aircraft, a military helicopter, or even a satellite), identify the core skills needed to (a) design it, (b) build it and (c) operate it - then you should have the right basis for training aerospace professionals in general, and engineers in particular.
Sadly, for engineering training, that link was probably initially lost 20 years ago and they've been drifting apart since.
G