My school has a CS 100 course that everyone has to take, but in the second half of the semester teams have to use PIC Assembly to program a microcontroller on an RC car/truck (that can go up to 20mph) to navigate an obstacle course with its four IR sensors. There's also a concurrent CS 120 class that is basically a standard C course.
Unfortunately the Assembly scares off a lot of people from looking at the Computer Engineering degree, as does the very minimal breadboard wiring they have to do, since they assume that's all CE students do. It's a tradeoff of getting more people for a degree program vs. starting off low level. Why do you think so many schools teach Java or C# and never touch an assembly? If your school has to justify keeping a program alive, they're going to have to make it more appealing to a larger audience which unfortunately means creating an easier program or first few semesters, and targeting big-industry popular languages so you can keep subtly hinting at potential good jobs on graduation.
Unfortunately the Assembly scares off a lot of people from looking at the Computer Engineering degree, as does the very minimal breadboard wiring they have to do, since they assume that's all CE students do. It's a tradeoff of getting more people for a degree program vs. starting off low level. Why do you think so many schools teach Java or C# and never touch an assembly? If your school has to justify keeping a program alive, they're going to have to make it more appealing to a larger audience which unfortunately means creating an easier program or first few semesters, and targeting big-industry popular languages so you can keep subtly hinting at potential good jobs on graduation.