I took a (mandatory) class on C as part of my degree ten years ago. Your description matches what I saw around the lab. They dropped C the following year. I th

I took a (mandatory) class on C as part of my degree ten years ago. Your description matches what I saw around the lab. They dropped C the following year. I think the reason for this is that coding in C involves knowing a lot about the insides of a computer (eg. what memory even means, how it is addressed, why allocating a string isn't trivial at the machine level and thus requiring pointers in C, indirection, etc). In other words, there are many prerequisites coming from various other classes. Another example of the sort of thing I mean, although it doesn't directly apply to C: it's hard to understand space and time complexity (ie. big O) without understanding the complexity of basic steps that requires knowledge of the types of things a CPU can do (eg. that memory is effectively a vector, changing a location in memory is O(1) but inserting data into a vector is far more expensive). IMHO, there simply isn't time for classes to cover all these prerequisites thoroughly (ie. to a level needed for practical coding in C) before a C class can commence. With something like Java or Python you can ignore the complexities until you have had time to learn them. With C you can't. Thus, it isn't sensible to teach C in college. At least not as a mandatory thing for a CS graduate. And the moment it isn't mandatory the hard classes will get dropped (I took harder classes because I found them interesting, but that lowered my average compared to what I might have achieved otherwise).