I would suggest most of us are engineers, not scientists.
And, on that note, I would say that learning to build robust systems is important. I split my time between CS and EE at college, and in many ways the EE stuff was more useful because after a certain point it wasn't enough to create an amplifier with a few transistors - you had to design an amp that did common-mode rejection, handled noise, dealt with normal tolerances of parts, and so on.
Exceptions are a way of building robust code (not the only way). I would say I'd want that mode of thinking taught. Very, very few graduates are actually going to go on and do original research into algorithms or teach. An engineering education goes a long way in my book.
Exceptions are not "thrown" but caused, raised at best... The way Exceptions are provided in Java are bad if you'd ask me. Anyway you should expect CS graduates with experience in Python, Ruby, C++, Java, ML, Haskell or similar languages to be able to handle exceptions. Anyway. The question remains why you even want a CS graduate to do Java? Also there are slight differences in the semantics of exceptions in aforementioned languages though i.e. C++ Exceptions are "thrown" without operator new but is syntactically quite similar.
So. Do you think throwing exceptions is a must have for entry-level Java development? I don't. It is not important during most simple projects (which you'd do in your curriculum), is most often ignored or rethrown, or looked up and understood in a few minutes. Aren't patterns more important? Or general ideas? Java is just another language which will become a burden (Luke COBOL).
Just my thoughts...
>> ...C++ Exceptions are "thrown" without operator new...
Reading this reminded me how dependent I am on intelisense for a lot of languages. I work in C++ and Java all day every day, and if you asked me how to throw an exception in either, without sitting at a computer (where I'd remember or grope for it), I'd give the syntax for the wrong language 50% of the time.
Maybe assessing people by putting them in front of a computer with an IDE would be useful?
