The intent down the road has been stated to have Feats, where specialties are pre-selected feat packages. We just only have access to specialties currently (silimar to how we have levels 1-5, while internally they have stuff to at least 10, based on the penny arcade podcast).
Similarly backgrounds are pre-packaged skill bundles, though I'm not sure how they'll handle the bonus thing, they seem to just be a flavorful perk, so for folks who want to pick their own skills, it wouldn't be hard to say "pick one of the perks, or talk to the DM."
I do agree it's awkward to have pre-reqs not stated up-front for the specialty bundles, but at present it seems like a notational side effect of having them be bundles of pre-selected feats, which have their own prereqs.