How physics is taught

Physics professor Frank Tipler is concerned that new PhD students in physics aren't being taught such basic and well accepted theories such as the standard model and general relativity. (HT Instapundit.)

Skipping such basic material seems very sensible to me. Math skills quickly deteriorate after a person reaches 25 or so. New theoretical physicists, therefore, don't have much time to make breakthroughs. To maximize the chance of their students' making significant contributions, consequently, physics PhD programs need to skip huge amounts of material and just teach their students enough so the students can do work at the cutting edge.

I know nothing about the mathematics of string theory. But let's assume that you don't need to have a detailed understanding of the standard model or relativity to do work on string theory. A 23 year old string theorist, therefore, should not spend his time studying these two models, rather he should be devoting all his energy to string theory. After the string theorist hits 35 and has lost much of his creative mathematical abilities then he will have the time to go back and learn about the standard model and relativity.

Frank Tipler might understand a lot of physics but he doesn't get the basic economic concept of opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of something is the best opportunity you have to give up to do that thing. For a 23 year old physics PhD student the opportunity cost of spending a year learning about relativity and the standard model is giving up, perhaps, 15% of his most creative research years.