Typically, the research work of engineering students I've had in general education courses has proved quite high in quality.

My model in construction engineering is to team an undergraduate research assistant with a graduate research assistant and I find thier work to be excellent. We've even had a couple that were able to publish thier results in top tier journals. The best advantage from my perspective is about 10% decide to stay and do postgraduate work, giving me a pool of new RAs that are already trained.

Cheers

DG