It might be now, but it wasn't back when C was the norm in college. Everyone knew how to step through visual studio in 101, or they failed out. If you didn't have windows, you learned gdb pdq :)
that doesn't mean that we won't ever need fax again, or morse code, it still exists and has it's place, but for the majority of users it's not needed, and the same will happen with all technology, including programming. eventually almost noone will need or use something low level like C, just like most people right now don't need or use assembly, or even lower level, machine code, or even lower level... I don't even know what's lower level. Point being as things move along the lower level, while still being there, is understood and used by less and less people.
I.e.: its like a world where all our cellphones/email still, under the covers, run over fax, and we still need a fax machine in every house to make this possible. =P
Without people to write the languages in C, and without people to hack on the kernel in C, there will be no more languages, and existing C based languages will get no more features.
The best you can do now is write one high-level language in another, and that tends to be reasonably slow.
Just because you don't understand something, or because you don't know anybody who does, that doesn't mean that technology is disappearing, it just means you're in a selective circle.