Why? Mostly because this will be your chance to learn a language that is immensely different from what you will come across today. The entire structure and syntax of it is like nothing modern. But it's quite interesting too, even perl has stolen^Wborrowed ideas from COBOL - the builtin sort statement is (the only?) one of them.

You will see some early attempts at portability, early attempts at structured code, and come back longing for 'MOVE CORRESPONDING' (which can be emulated with use of hashes) but very happy that subroutines have arguments (I learned COBOL in '72 things may have changed :), that syntax is denser, but certainly much wiser.

VB is something that you can be confronted with later, and C++ and/or Java are nice, but you will no doubt have loads of opportunities to learn them later.

If there had been a course in APL I would have recommended that as well - your scholl days are the only chance you'll get to learn the more outré languages - use it to get a wide base. The common ones can alwys be learnt later. I have learned both C++, Perl and Java by reading the manuals (and perhaps a book or two) and looking at code. Once you have your first half-dozen languages nothing surprises you ;-)