I’ve worked in academics and industry around biologists, chemists, physicists, statisticians, bioinformaticians, and all varieties of engineers.

I’ve never seen “huge swaths” of anyone expected to learn R for anything outside of a few niche areas in statistics and bioinformatics.

What people are expected to know is how to use a spreadsheet. What people are often given is Microsoft Excel, and essentially nothing else. A lot of companies wouldn’t dream of letting random employees install or use R or Python.

It’s not ideal. But some battles can’t be won and aren’t worth fighting. Which is why people use Excel for so many things.

I never seen R being used, when Excel doesn't work out, it is something like Tableau instead.