"academic passion" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when referring to a strong enthusiasm for learning that a student may have, for example: "John showed an undeniable academic passion throughout his university studies."
I call this the paradox of academic passion.
The most important of course is an academic passion for your subject, an unquenchable urge to know more about stem cells or inflation or feminist poetry.
My academic passion is patient-engaged medical education, including doctor-patient communication, professionalism, physical examination and clinical reasoning.
We recommend, therefore, that you study subjects that are challenging and interesting to you and that you follow your academic passion.
In the art world, converging factors produced the irresistible clout of a Zeitgeist: the staffing of institutions (notably, an international network of biennials and the like) with grownup nineteen-sixties lefties, an academic passion for French and German strains of engaged intellectualism, and a generational recoil from the money-drunk saturnalia of the eighties art scene.
But as Magzoub looked around and saw peers that were so excited about what they were doing, she realized that she still hadn't uncovered her academic passion, and she needed to continue exploring.
This is particularly true with students whose academic passions span everything from Russian literature to photovoltaics.
I love being able to mix my two academic passions, law and journalism, and Syracuse offers a joint-degree program in the S.I.
His academic passions continued after compulsory retirement at 65, focusing on the philosophy of science and the relationship between science and religion.
One of his early academic passions was South Africa -- he worked on Nelson Mandela's campaign in 1994 -- but he inexorably moved into American politics in the early 1980's.
In these, and other papers, students developed compelling and sophisticated topics on the history of space and design linked to their own academic passions.
