Yeah, same here. And what really scares me is that no one can see past the prison of Java, not even the professors.
I am trying to convert some of my friends over to the Lisp Way. Making a little progress, but most of my friends don't think they have time to learn Lisp on top of their other classes.
I have heard that even universities are held hostage by students who view college as merely job training, demanding courses in the languages business cannot see past.
Seems to me the unis should fight that fight, but there are a lot of unis in the US, they have to think about marketing, too.
Perhaps as the IT job market continues to shrink the masses will move on to something else and let the computer science departments go back to teaching algorithms.
I haven't met many students that are set on learning Java and only Java (or insert other popular language of choice), mostly its just that they don't know anything better is out there. I have, however, met professors who hold very strong, and wildly incorrect views on Lisp (many of which probably haven't been accurate for 20 years or more). But how is a college freshman supposed to tell a guy with a PhD he is completely incorrect?
I've heard claims that they'll let me program in whatever language I want in upper division, but I have to wonder if that is true or not.
IIRC, Brown has two introductory computer science tracks -- one that starts with Scheme and the other with Java, with the Scheme course recommended for majors. They've got one of the PLT Scheme implementors on faculty, too, so some of the advanced courses are Scheme-based, as well.
