Well, it's hard to argue against your 25-year-old personal experience and your amazement.
Less snarkily: I teach university-level CS, and of the five schools I've had direct involvement with (as student or faculty), all covered GC algorithms someplace but I think at least four of them, maybe all five, had at least one path through the major that would avoid covering them. I have researched the situation for certain "core" topics other than GC at dozens of top CS schools and I can promise you that there are many topics that are widely (and correctly) viewed as very important to CS but are not required even at many of the best schools.
My comment was intended to demonstrate that 25 odd years ago these things were covered in a non-optional way when the were regarded as fairly esoteric. Today when a lot of mainstream languages have them you'd think a CS course would cover them!
Note I'm in the UK and degree courses here are, as far as I can tell, structured rather differently to those in the US. When I did a CS course the classes required were 80% fixed by your choice of course - there was no flexibility or modularity in the first 3 years, with only the final year allowing for selection of classes. There was no way to graduate without passing the class that included GC algorithms.
Of course, it wouldn't surprise me if this kind of approach has been made more "flexible" to make courses more "accessible".
Less snarkily: I teach university-level CS, and of the five schools I've had direct involvement with (as student or faculty), all covered GC algorithms someplace but I think at least four of them, maybe all five, had at least one path through the major that would avoid covering them. I have researched the situation for certain "core" topics other than GC at dozens of top CS schools and I can promise you that there are many topics that are widely (and correctly) viewed as very important to CS but are not required even at many of the best schools.