I don't know if they've addressed it. But ~15 years ago, my father was mentoring some college students and noticed that while they had been taught to machine a block (i.e., the rudiments of machining), they had no idea how to design appropriate tolerances for e.g., a gear because they hadn't ever made anything that complicated. So it was an issue back then. Presumably these details are learned on the job through trial and error, or by oversight from a more senior engineer who understands the requirements better. But in the past it was understood you'd start learning them from actually building parts as part of the curriculum.

A mate of mine was trained as a mechanical engineer and part of his training was to hand-file a chunk of steel to a cube exactly 2cm x 2cm, to within 1/10mm tolerance, every side exactly square. He said it was really, really, boring, but taught valuable lessons. I get this idea ;)

I would think that these days all of this is incorporated into the CAD/CAM software that they're using, right?