It is completely inexcusable that people in STEM fields are so reactionary, considering how capitalism utterly destroys science.
If universities were actually "left wing indoctrination factories" like the right thinks they are, every STEM grad would be taught, for example, what Kropotkin had to say about innovation.
Engineers are good at specific forms of applied math. Academic mathematics can be so completely different and esoteric that it's really more in line with philosophy than with engineering.
"Industrial Society & Its Future" anyone?
In my experience it's like engineering but for a universe with different and strange properties.
I told myself that when I get bored with making stuff that I'd just pursue math until I fall over dead.