ASP? Not ASP.NET? Wow... I haven't any new sites deployed in ASP in almost 10 years. IIRC, ASP is nothing more but bunch of spaghetti codes and no OOP. That's why attendance/registration is so low. Only main web (server side) development languages are ASP.NET (C#), Java, and PHP (listed as alphabetical order - not based on demand/popularity). You'd probably say Perl and/or Python too. IMO, best way to convince the administration is job search for "ASP under IT category" and show them the results vs search for PHP ;) No need for long explanations and comparisons since the point of having students certified is that they could get a job quickly.
Best wishes, Tommy
