My own school (a two-year tech college) recently ditched VB in favor of Perl for its Network Specialist program. Where universities are typically houses of intelecutual aditudes (which has its place), tech schools have a "get stuff done" aditude (which also has its place). Perl may make a lot more sense for tech schools, especially for a networking program, which is going to turn out a lot of future administrators, not full-fledged programmers.

OTOH, I can see the argument for Java over Perl in the more intelectual environment of a full university. However, I think Python and Ruby are even better choices.