As someone with a PhD in engineering and physics, i spend most of my time in such a tiny niche of hyperspecialization that it's tough not to think "I know exactly 4 people in the world who care about this stuff, and I've met all of them at conferences" .

This is my lukewarm take borrowing a much maligned term/concept. Isn't doctoral research literally the spearhead of human innovation? I hesitate to use the term "trickle down" but I feel like specialization is trickle down. As someone who has spent years in academia yourself, you'd agree that there is some amount of revision that specialization trickles down to the "lower" levels like undergrad curricula or even high school stuff.

Now none of this happens at the rate at which would keep up with modern issues, but even at glacial pace, it is still present. And better PhD advisors will encourage their grad students to pursue diverse angles within the constraints of their own projects. A unique example of this in action is hyperspecialization being pivoted and deployed towards humanitarian causes would be rapid testing and vaccine development during the pandemic. Many research groups hard pivoted using the very sharpened tips of their Blades toward solving a more pressing need.

At no point do I disagree with your general premise, I merely think that the lower to mid tiers of the knowledge pyramid have to adapt new information gleaned by the higher education tiers quicker and more effectively to keep the knowledge machine chugging along to help humanity!