It isn't necessarily analogous to compare the study of writing in college to that of learning to program. For one, by the time you are in college, you have been speaking, reading, and analyzing (via communication) your native language for ~15 years. Because we already have such a vast foundation to work from, we can venture into deeper parts of the language and meaning and interpreting how authors use it to create meaning.
I think programming is more analogous to learning a new language. Now I can imagine studying Spanish (a non-native language for me) without reading a ton of books, and analyzing and critiquing other Spanish writers, because I simply can't and it isn't that beneficial - from the beginning - to start that without have some foundation to work from. It is only after you learn some vocabulary, grammar, semantics, sentence structure and some cultural significance, that you venture into analyzing and critiquing their writing.
I think for beginner programmers, it isn't supremely beneficial to read a bunch of others code, because you don't really know what is good and what isn't or even what to really look for. However, when a programmer creeps into the intermediate level of things, I think reading other's code becomes amazing beneficial, because from that foundation, you can understand, analyze, critique, and maybe most importantly, internalize what that programmer is really trying to achieve and how you can use their methods going forward.
Now in reality, we don't really know the point we hit that intermediate level, and we will inevitably be reading other's code at the beginner level. I think it's just a matter of shifting the weight that we put on reading other's code as we mature as programmers.