Do you think there could be a risk telling the eager-eyed philosophy students that there are truths that they should grant on principle but that they don't need to understand the details?
What do they think when they take the epistemology course next?
Yes the details are important; if you are so inclined to trace the reasoning all the way back to the axioms, thankfully they are very easy to understand! And doing so would definitely prepare them for epistemology. There's a reason that physics leans heavily on category theory.
What do they think when they take the epistemology course next?