In fact they thought some of the educators on the panel were being harsher on themselves than the students would be, so that was nice to hear. Simply because engineering is a discipline that lies at the intersection of theory and practice. The theoretical principles don't change, of course, but the way we practice the art does change from generation to generation. In fact, today a generation is as short as 3-6 years. So trying to keep pace with that is unique to engineering.
Some students do trust the simulators a little too much.
I try to discourage that. As circuits increase in complexity, CAD tools become more necessary and I think it's fair to say that some of these extremely large and complex circuits simply can't be built without them. There's a way to balance these concerns against the demands of high-productivity engineers. No, this was sort of an ad hoc, one-shot event. As complexity continues to increase, it's always a good idea to look around and see if you're responding to that stress in an appropriate way.