I think that putting requirements on workers that are not directly related to the completion of their duties is a tricky area. Of course an employment contract is never going to cover everything and usually they are written in a fairly general, all encompassing sort of way. But managers need to be tactful if they are asking for this kind of thing. It seems a no brainer to me that if some activity is supposed to be developmental it should either be optional, or the employee should have something to show for it at the end such as a certification of some kind. People like to be self determining, they dont like managers who act like their mother and tell them to do things because 'it is for your own good'. I would suggest allowing people to choose what to study and perhaps make it a little competitive. He could schedule a monthly meeting where people give a short presentation of what they have the time for, maybe even give some kind of small prize for the best presentation chosen by vote of everyone else.
On economics - the author seems to be making the common mistake of conflating desire with demand. For the purpose of those types of graph demand is not how much people want a product, it is how much they will buy at a given price. The difference is best illustrated with a simple example. I may have a large desire for a Ferrari, but at several hundred thousand dollars I will not buy a single one - demand =zero (for me). Those graphs dont really provide a good description of how prices are set anyway.