Love of Learning or Learning for the next task

So last night I listened to an interesting podcast -- Bad Philosophy Episode 63 http://www.badphilosophy.com/blog/2010/04/19/episode-063-one-big-shiny-piece-of-paper/

Yes, my son, is on the podcast as well as a couple other college guys. They made some interesting points on this one. The podcast subject was prompted by the resignation of the Dean of the Honor's College at Texas Tech. He resigned because he did not agree with the university's administration's desire to achieve Tier One status -- or at least how they were going about getting it. Apparently research is a BIG deal for Tier One schools. When a professor has to do more research, he has less time to teach an honors course -- therefore, fewer professors were available to teach honors and they had to cut from 80 honors classes to around 50! That does not sound like progress to me.
I'm not really sure they talked about all that -- I read it in an article on the subject.

The guys did talk though about the value of a college education and the difference in getting a "universal education" and getting a degree to allow one to go to work. Universities were formed to do both I think. However, as Kevin said, some people just sleep through the classes that don't help them in the job market and manage to pull C's. They possibly listen more in the classes that they might be using in the marketplace. Most universities have a core curriculum that includes math, English, history, arts, etc. This is designed to give the student the universal education.

When did we get away from learning something just to expand one's mind and get to only learning what one needs to learn for the next task at hand. Where is the love of learning? Can we get it back? Should we?

Note: The guys on the podcast are Honors students. Kevin graduated with Honors last year and the other two will graduate next month. I think they tend to have more of the "love of learning".