That is certainly the ethic of our times, even on university boards and the like. I wish it were not, as I do regard knowledge as inherently valuable, and the private sector as being completely incompetent at assessing the value of knowledge, even situationally.I'm with you on this. Thinking a little more about it, I wonder if the predominant use case of paper and e-books, at least in terms of knowledge acquisition, is to learn a narrow discipline for the purpose of making money. Once you've made it through school and have done a little self-study, you've already arrived at a comfortable life where more knowledge for the sake of knowledge is maybe not that relevant to your bottom line.
Speaking for my own discipline and its practical applications, if a company realizes even after the fact that they should perhaps have learned something about the culture of their customers, laborers, or business partners before starting a business venture with them, it's a small miracle. But there are a lot of voluntary fiascos out there that the perusal of a few books could conceivably have prevented.
When you look at it from the perspective of biology it makes some level of sense. Do as much as is necessary, and no more. What differentiates the wise from the foolish is how necessary is defined. I'd think that for the overwhelming amount of people it's not difficult to get away with avoiding books once their career is established.
But I do think most people would be better off if they put a little effort in. It'd be hard to overstate the difference reading has made to my career. It only accounts for a small part of my success, but arguably the most important part. One of the challenging aspects of the business world is knowing why to choose [x] over [y], and I usually know that why.