As a recently minted theoretical physics PhD, I feel rather the opposite way on this. The vast majority of Nobel laureates still went through the usual university progression, which isn't at all designed to cater to the smartest students, but rather to ensure that a substantial part (~15-20% or so in my program, but this varies greatly) of the student population can actually graduate and do at least some research work afterwards. Notwithstanding the actual thesis research, I feel like my program could have easily been compressed by a factor of at least 2x (dispensing with much of the repetition that goes into making sure most people can do the exercises and internalize the concepts) without compromising the final state of my education.

Furthermore, if your goal isn't to do research work but rather to be able to follow along an average research article using the basic framework of QFT, you can also cut out much of the lab work. Susan is clearly considerably above average in intelligence and a quick study, and I'm impressed by her perseverence, but I don't think this is at all beyond what any good theoretical physicist could have done. It's just that they went a different path, going through the university system, a path with its own advantages, but brevity is not among them.