engineering classes are great and expensive, but honestly teach you nothing more than how to learn.
you can take materials classes and mostly they teach you about fracture mechanics, lattice arrangements, blah blah blah. it the design for manufacturability that teaches you how the graphite and platics parts are designed and why. however, it is a very unrealistic view to think that any rc company out there produces top of the line kits. the real world functions by designing a reliable product with popular features and do it as cheap as possible and usually with an annual cost reduction of 5-20% in cost.