This may be true for some degrees, but I feel like my engineering degrees were worth it and would still be worth it online. I feel like I could have gotten at least 75% of the value of my education online, especially with my Master's degree (both in Electrical Engineering). For me at least the value of my engineering degrees was in learning the fundamental approaches to solving problems, and most of my classes were lectures anyways without much interaction.
For engineering at least I think the other 25% of college should be building things, and unfortunately that is much harder online!
Electrical Engineer w/o a lab to practice is rather hard - I guess nowadays people can start with microcontrollers instead but that's a far cry from EE.
Yes, labs are definitely helpful to do in person as well, even with just other students and a TA there. I think they would go under the category of "building stuff", so maybe I should revise 75/25 to 60/40!
For engineering at least I think the other 25% of college should be building things, and unfortunately that is much harder online!