About those required courses...

Has it occurred to anyone else that things which fifty years ago were cutting edge are now standard for an engineering degree, regardless of any real usefulness to ones particular concentration?
I don't see how physics problems that Einstein himself had to figure out solutions to are expected to be standard material for a computer science major to learn from a few lecture slides.

Something worth thinking about. I'm apparently expected to be able to do things that used to justify a doctorate in the course of a two hour exam. Something doesn't sit right about that.