I generally think that this approach is wrongheaded. It takes the transfer of information to be primary, and everything else more or less falls behind.

It's true that US philosophy departments often have some kind of course requirements, but I don't think this indicates that they value 'transfer of information' over teaching the sorts of skills you mention. Rather, the course requirements are a means towards teaching those skills. After all, you can't just teach philosophical thinking, reading, and writing in the abstract - you have to give students some concrete content to work with - specific problems to think about, specific texts to read, topics to write about, etc. Having some kind of structured curriculum is a way of having students engage with content in a way that isn't completely chaotic and frustrating (e.g., throwing students into a contemporary philosophy of language class without knowing any formal logic.) Likewise, forcing students to take classes in different areas of philosophy is a means of having them exercise different kinds of skills.

Indeed, of the philosophy departments I've seen, the emphasis is on acquiring the skills you mention instead of mastering content. After all, philosophy departments know that most of their undergrads won't become philosophers, and they have to make themselves marketable to students who think the humanities are useless. So undergraduate programs often emphasize teaching 'transferable skills' that will make them employable.