Yes , I agree with you geodome, I think that these skills should be specifically taught and then practiced throughout a degree.
Do you think that skills such as keeping a lab book/journal, writing a report, analysing data etc are science specific? In other words does a student studying chemistry, physics, geology, biology etc have to learn these specifics for each topic or should some of these skills be "universal"?
I think that the foundations, or basics, of each science are probably the same and that specialisation would occur later.