This is missing the forest for the trees. The language for a university course in computation needn't be "commercially relevant". What's important is whether it

This is missing the forest for the trees. The language for a university course in computation needn't be "commercially relevant". What's important is whether it serves the pedagogical purpose of teaching students to think about computation. Learning this or that programming language isn't at all what it's about--you can (and will over and over again throughout your career) do that on your own time. It's about developing the abstract thought pathways that enable you to quickly learn and think about computing. I don't know why MIT chose to stop teaching the course, but it sure would lower my opinion of that institution if it was something to do with the direct commercial appeal of "knowing Python".