Pascal numbers _are_ dwindeling. Very slowly but surely. It reminds me a bit of Apple before Mac OS X. Not many desert, but the ones that do are not replaced.

I agree with Tom that there is still quite some use in the Brazil and Eastern Europe countries. They count for quite a lot of the download counters (FPC Bloodshed Pascal downloads are in the 6 figures)

In the professional world, Delphi is still quite strong, mainly in NW Europe (the heartland seems to be Benelux+Germany+Scandinavia)

However any group without a influx of new persons is bound to die, even though that can take another 5-10 years.

Another problem I have with the push to so called industry languages is not so much the change of language, but also e.g. IDE.

I've seen students wrestle with overly complex Java GUI IDEs and frameworks (SWING) that are slow and slightly instable. Most students don't get it, and simply go with the flow, copy assignments etc. They never actually get the bigger picture, and were fighting to master the IDE and the designer most of the class. (Tom: this was in the institution just on the other side of the road from your perspective).

So the problem is not that (only) that the language is changed, but that other standards of educational usability slip too. Most notably simplicity and stability, all because of industry standard use that the students don't get any real benefit from in the first place.