In design school, we had one class which involved things like developing your portfolio, learning how to present yourselves to companies, interviews with Creative Directors, etc.
Given that technical interviews a common method of partially evaluating engineers/developers, it doesn't strike me as particularly odd for a practical course to exist that helps students maximize their ability to get a job. As you mentioned, it's really only one class out of dozens of others they'll take over several years. Myself, I took a number of electives that had far less practical impact on my career trajectory.
I don't think most people have a problem with the class itself. It's more that the technical interview has gotten away from a practical method of showing what you know, and is now becoming a skill to maximize itself, whether or not it actually demonstrates if you can do the job.
To take an absurd example, imagine if for some reason Law firms started requiring an Irish Stepdancing component to their hiring process. I'm sure broadly speaking, you'll see the most dedicated lawyers practicing away on nights and weekends, and the best Law Schools with the best students will hire the best Irish Stepdancing teachers. But at the end of the day, Irish Stepdancing has very little to do with practicing Law. Similarly, if solving stupid whiteboard problems has so little to do with being a Software Engineer, that they can't be learned in the 40+ other courses or internships/PT work, that a student will have to do in their time at University, then the question is why are they even done?
This isn't quite so far fetched as it seems. Perhaps someone tried the dancing thing to see how a candidate handles himself in an awkward position under pressure in front of people. They found some limited value in it and wrote a blog post about it. Then other law firms started using it. It became a way for such firms to assess a candidates emotional strength under pressure. And now law schools are offering a 1 credit course in "interview dance". Seems to be the perfect analogy to what's going on here ;-)
I’m Irish. WTF is Irish step dancing or Irish stepdancing?
On the correlation of irrelevant things to performance in a demanding job you know law school is at best as related to the practice of law as Bar review courses right?
Given that technical interviews a common method of partially evaluating engineers/developers, it doesn't strike me as particularly odd for a practical course to exist that helps students maximize their ability to get a job. As you mentioned, it's really only one class out of dozens of others they'll take over several years. Myself, I took a number of electives that had far less practical impact on my career trajectory.