If I had to teach all college graduates one language, it would be SQL. It's more practical than C. Most all developers these days write at least some SQL, and most do it badly.

If we teach non-programmers, folks like salespeople, managers, or scientists how to write their own queries against a database, without handing off their requests to IT, they can immediately start benefitting from that knowledge. It's empowering.

If you teach them C, they'll spend weeks learning how print "Hello World" on a console, will never use it, and will forget everything three months.