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Where I did my CS degree (Imperial College London) , Haskell is the first language taught (before Java and C).

To my knowledge across 4 years there, nobody ever dropped out because of the Haskell.

People usually struggled with the maths instead.

People also did not have more problems getting Haskell concepts right than linked list modification in Java.

They might not drop out specifically because of Haskell, but I don't see how it wouldn't be a contributing factor. The Haskell course here was pretty much just a struggle for almost everyone that took it.

Mind the opposite: finishing a bachelor's without ever having to deal with a functional language.

I've met a lot of people (at work and post-grad) who have graduated from colleges without an idea of what a functional language is or the concepts behind them. I don't blame them, but its a pity to find so many workarounds in legacy code which could have benefited from functions as parameters and less state in general.

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