It's not a matter of "trusting" vs. "distrusting" them. It's a matter of what universities (and other exclusive institutions, for that matter) select for. If you select for "social skills, linguistic ability, and emotional intelligence" without also having any objective way of measuring actual productive potential, not to mention evaluating a person's actual willingness to use their talents in support of a cooperative civil society, you're going to get a lot of people who will be very good at preying on others and using the system they are gaining entrance to as a tool to that end.

> It's not like there aren't plenty of engineers, scientists, math folks, i.e. those "honest", quantitative folks, who aren't also crappy or deceptive people

Yes, that's true, but without those social skills they do a lot less damage, because they can't get very many people to interact with them.