in the university I went to, it was the contrary ... we were not taught perl on purpose : because the teachers knew we could learn perl by ourselves, that perldoc is well done and the community of users is really nice and helpful :)
I had the luck to learn how to learn, rather than learning static fixed stuffs ... Teachers wanted us to learn how to improve ourselves, and they succeeded in giving us the taste to always look for new and different ways to work :)