4th (final) year software engineering student here (college level).
As far as I know, I haven't even seen visual basic code, nevermind being taught it.
Though from what I've heard, it is one of the worst languages to start with.
For easy languages you could use to learn coding, PHP and python would probably be the best choices. Though if you want to get straight to the juicy coding parts, C++, C# and/or java make fine choices. These are programming languages (php and python are scripting languages... you can check wiki for specific details on the differences between the two, in short.. PHP/python allow a lot of mucking about with variables, C++/C#/java are a lot more strict).