Is this common? I'm taking the "Introduction To Programming Languages" at Coursera and we're using SML straight out of the gate. It's really fun and totally different from the Java and before that the basic AS/JS I experimented with. Do universities not tend to offer these types of courses?

Is this an advantage of the free courses (relatively unpopular or obscure languages being taught for learning's sake) which paid courses can't or won't offer?