The students in a way were also doing the labor of the academy through archiving as well as learning the basics of emergent symbol systems.

I need to really delve into your thinking here. On one instance this type of rote copying is frowned upon, but handwriting books not that different than time of Mesopotamia.

We now say learning to read and reading to learn....Kinda the same thing. Learning to write and then writing to learn. Beginner and advanced.