The math-Matlab correlation may not be as big as you think. In my university, we use Matlab for almost nothing in the degree (I used it in Signal Processing), and write all our math code in C (Newton's methods, ODE integrators, linear system solvers). Of course this does not mean "knowing how to program" (unless you learn all the missing stuff along the way), or doing non-shitty code, but this is unrelated to Matlab being present