> I admit that I was initially surprised by how often I ran into the attitude from students in these programs that they don't actually need to be well-versed in anything besides the exact information they need to know to conduct research in their field.

The PhD students tend to get this attitude from the competitive publish an perish environment where they are in. Sometimes suprrvisours are contributing by dismissing students gaining context and the big picture on why their research is important when the research topic is preassigned as it is unproductive. When the productivity is measured in papers not curios PhD graduates who contribute to the society that’s true.