University's job is to expose students to variety of subjects even if they don't like it. It's part of the education.
Exposure to different subjects is good, but there are better, cleaner languages to use for introducing concepts of programming such as variables, functions, algorithms, and data structures without taking up students' attention with syntax and boilerplate that has nothing to do with the lesson being taught.
Compare these hello world programs for instance:
Java:
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello, world!");
}
}
Python: print "Hello, world!"
Ruby: puts 'Hello, world!'
From what I understand, a lot of universities do force students to use Java for many introductory courses, mine included (though we're migrating to Python.)