I doubt the author is seriously suggesting a secret cabal of academic administrators meets to "build people into student-drones who blindly memorize information

I doubt the author is seriously suggesting a secret cabal of academic administrators meets to "build people into student-drones who blindly memorize information." From my reading, he is suggesting that academia has evolved this way over time, due to the greater culture of the, as DFW would put it, "day to day trenches of adult life."