I agree with all of that. I acquired a reputation at my (very small - maybe it only works there?) college for showing up for classes for which I wasn't (on paper) qualified, and sweet-talking professors into letting me attend (sometimes for credit, sometimes not. Some of those were among my best experiences, too.

I gestured at it, but didn't quite complete the thought, in my first comment: a cross-disciplinary culture is essential between professors and departments, not just students. If universities are to be engines of innovation, and not glorified job-training centers, then experts have to form social bonds, and have out-of-band conversations, and develop projects together, too.

"Didn't let intellectual curiosity interfere with their professional goals" is spot-on as an indictment of our entire culture, at the moment.