That's what my university did (Masaryk University Brno). It taught Haskell in the first semester. I, already programming in other stuff, was delighted to see a new interesting thing. Other students who already did some coding (PHP usually) reacted more like W.T.F. I'd this. I can't tell about the total newbs but in the end, only 30-40% passed. But that was mostly caused by their laziness because when they repeated the class and realized that they have to put in some work, the success was much better.