I am personally a graduate of the Mechatronics program (MTE '09) at Waterloo. The requirement for co-op is anything but arbitrary - engineering is fundamentally not a purely academic discipline. Even graduate-level research in engineering is tied to industry (or government).
Academic excellence is an insufficient qualification for success in this field, even if your end goal is to stay in institutional research.
Being able to work in-industry is a requirement of the field no matter which corner of it you want to live in, and holding you back until you prove your ability to work in industry absolutely makes sense.
I suspect your friend was mistaken about what engineering meant.
On a more frank note: maybe more schools should slow down students who cannot prove rudimentary job-finding skills, maybe then we wouldn't end up with the legions of unemployable college grads we have today.
Academic excellence is an insufficient qualification for success in this field, even if your end goal is to stay in institutional research.
Being able to work in-industry is a requirement of the field no matter which corner of it you want to live in, and holding you back until you prove your ability to work in industry absolutely makes sense.
I suspect your friend was mistaken about what engineering meant.
On a more frank note: maybe more schools should slow down students who cannot prove rudimentary job-finding skills, maybe then we wouldn't end up with the legions of unemployable college grads we have today.