I don't see any reason why you would want everyone who graduates to know about the 555 or the 741 or any other general purpose IC that you can think of.
Would you employ a supposed Electonics 'graduate' who had never heard of a 555 or a 741?. Both chips manufactured in the multiple millions (if not billions?).
Any such graduate obviously doesn't have the slightest interest in Eelectronics, which I would consider a serious failing - I must admit I've hardly ever used 555's myself, perhaps ten (if that) over all it's life - but using and knowing how to use are totally different things.
Over the years I've interviewed various people for service engineer jobs, and also kids on work experience - three things I
ALWAYS do:
1) Ask them if they know their resistor colour code.
2) If they say YES - then I throw them a 'difficult' resistor
2) If they say NO - then I throw them an 'easy' resistor.
3) Ask them what projects they have built.
The third one is the really telling one, anyone worth employing will have made all kinds of projects, will be able to bore you to death about them, and generally lose their nervousness while doing so.
For a graduate I would expect to hear about projects he did long before he went to Uni - I wouldn't want anyone who didn't have the 'drive' and 'enthusiasm' for electronics before then.