Sorry, but /r/minecraft targets tweens and kids. Yes, a subreddit primarily frequented by 8-15 year olds is going to appear "non-academic".

Even subreddits like /r/feedthebeast, which has become the de-facto modded minecraft subreddit (for Forge flavors, at least) host much higher quality discussions and content and have almost no memes/jokes upvoted.

But again, that's probably because the FTB subreddit has less overall subscribers (less incentive to post for karma, as there are less potential viewers to reward you) as well as an average higher age of the users.