The Best Colleges for Network Engineering?

viperstyx asks: "Ive come to that time in my life where I have to choose what colleges im going to apply to for my undergraduate degree. I'm very interested in Computer Science but I'm not sure if I want to major in Comp Sci, but I do have a high interest in networks. I hope to work on things like Internet2, or in a large business environment after college. I was hoping to find a college with a major, along the lines of Network Engineering, but I have yet to find one." What colleges have the best programs to prepare prospective networking engineers for the future?

You also...

You also forgot to add the part about the female to male ratio being 3:1 or so in your story... Just thought I'd be the first to correct your mistake. :)

Re:You also...

there are two point-of-views for male dominated institutions:

What the guys say...
The 500 Rule
"Either they weigh 500lbs or there are 500 other guys around them"

What the girls say...
"The odds are good, but the goods are odd"

It's not about the school...

It's about your own networks. People from unknown schools get onto interesting projects becuas hey know who's running them.

Get networking... with humans.

Re:It's not about the school...

agreed. there are unemployed grad students from uber cs schools, yet one of my best friends got a gig at Los Alamos after going to a {much} lesser known school...

Probably the best thing you can do is be born wealthy and connected. Failing that, get in early to the IEEE, or ACM clubs at whatever university you do go to- those are way good ways to make professional connections as an undergrad.

Don't just attend the meetings, meet the speakers when they come to campus. Talk to them, research the topics before so you can ask them intelligent questions. Be agressive but not rude... the professionals who go campus to campus generally have a personal commitment to making a difference.

Beyond that, I'd say the best way to get in to any really cool research project is to go ahead and get that doctorate degree in the feild you are seeking. Bachelors degrees won't matter much at that point... so you have 4 years (or 6.5 in my case) to worry about what school to go to...

Re:It's not about the school...

You are only partially correct, but partially wrong as well. Going to an unknown school and building a network of morons is not nearly as good as going to a good school and building a network of brilliant hard-working people.
When you choose a school, you're number one consideration should be the people at the school. Going to a school where everyone simply shows up for their classes and then goes home is not that great, regardless of what is actually taught in the classroom. You want to be somewhere where a large portion of the students are active in an ACM or IEEE chapter, where people outside the school are coming to give colloquia, where there are a number of seminars each week, etc. If you do this, then you have a good chance of knowing a number of people running interesting projects and will get to choose among them.

Re:It's not about the school...

You are only partially correct, but partially wrong as well. Going to an unknown school and building a network of morons is not nearly as good as going to a good school and building a network of brilliant hard-working people.

Hmmm... yes. How could I disagree? I have only one caveat. It's often hard to tell the morons from the guys who will one day be running Internet22 in first year. It gets a little clearer in upper year but even then your classmates are only part of the picture.

Go to conferences. Take jobs at great companies for possibly lousy pay. Then again, never take a joe job - always take intern positions that will push you & challenge you. Keep in touch with your bosses. Actually try to get to know those "old people" you work with.

My networking has improved a lot over the years (mostly due to how bad it was in the first place). I missed a lot of opportunities as a student mostly because I had no idea what I wanted to do. If you know you want to work on computer networks, then start meeting the right people today.

And yes, if you get into a top-tier school, that never hurt either. All the top schools are equally good. Apply to Waterloo [uwaterloo.ca] up here in Canada!

the school is the network

One of the best things about going to a school like Harvard or Stanford is that many of your classmates are wealthy and connected. During your program at school you will have many opportunities to form networks with fellow students, their parents, and alumni who later in life will be able to get you a job.

All you need is expereince

All you need is experience, alot of online resources for OIS, but get your hands on experience with a 3550, 4500, 6500, 7200 (from cisco) get a CCNA... A Dergee in Net Eng is useless if youve never actually implimented a network or worked with a network. Book smarts does not cut it with network engineering.. you need practical experience with both physical (wiring) and software (ois or what have you)... Nick D

I would agree.

I think college, in fact, is overrated in a lot of ways, putting yourself 60K in debt is not worth it. I'd recommend a cheap state school if possible, or community college for the first two years of college. Keep in mind, a lot of people change their minds after two years in college, and decide they want to do something else (or may just not like the field).

Moreover, I think technology is becoming extremely competitive. Better to try a field like nursing or maybe look for something in biotech.

In any case, if you want to do something in technology, be prepared to study hard and keep learning, tech is one of those fields requiring constant reeducation to maintain an edge.

Re:I would agree.

"Moreover, I think technology is becoming extremely competitive. Better to try a field like nursing or maybe look for something in biotech."

Close. People should study math or physics. You get enough exposure to technology in those majors that you can pick up whatever new technologies it is that you will need in any typical job situation. And with the math and logic skills that you will develop companies will actually want to hire you.

Of course your coding might be loose and ugly, but it is >alot easier for companies to teach good coding practices than higher level mathematics.

Re:I would agree.

Well with physics/mathematics degrees, you certainly need to sell yourself. There aren't job openings for 'Physicist' or 'Mathematician' outside of Academia/National Labs, however when people are hiring for research/analysis jobs, while not explicitly saying it, they certainly will consider qualified physicists, especially if you give them a good reason why to.

If you can get past the resumes into the interview phase, you normally can blow most everyone else out of the water using your analytical skills.

And i know this from experience, having a degree in physics, while spending several years in networks/system adminstration. My current job? I'm in grad school... in economics. Solely because of my analytical background. A Physics/Math type major certainly gives you the most versitility of any college degree. You just need to sell yourself.

Re:I would agree.

If you can get past the resumes into the interview phase, you normally can blow most everyone else out of the water using your analytical skills.

Well that's the tough part. And few interviewers will actually test your analytical skills in any meaningful way.

I think it's a common mistake to equate "these skills will allow me to skillfully perform the job" with "these skills will get me the job in the first place."

Re:All you need is expereince

Mmm. I'm not a big believer in certs, except to get past the HR people. All the CCNA/CCDA/CCNP/CCDP/CCSP show is that you can take the test. (Qualifier: I do have many of these, primarily since it was a promotion requirement)

I agree with the experience thing, though I don't think the actual hardware is important; my lab when I was studying for my CCIE was 5 2500s and a 4000 used as a frame switch. And that was Feb 2000. I leased some time to learn ISDN and I got it, but I didn't have the expensive toys to study on. (I was working in the field; I was doing ATM at the time. Both of these helped ENORMOUSLY. I was lucky in that the company I'm with hired me with a CS degree and no certs and I made the time around the work hours to study.)

More important, however, is understanding the theory. And that is what I look for when I'm interviewing; not if you know the command on whatever piece of hardware, but if you know what you're trying to do and can show me that you know where to find it in a reasonable timeframe. I don't care if you can rote memorize commands, or know every IEEE protocol by heart.

It's in this theory and understanding area that, in truth, is where I see the college degree coming in useful. Mine (Manchester, UK) I've never used. But I do networking and security, and neither of those was a focus for that. It also took me 10 years in the field to realise that the theory was the important part.

The degree also opens a lot of doors from HR people again, though I don't think I'd specialise early either. You could look for somewhere with a Cisco Academy and hopefully get the best of both worlds; the 'cisco cert' and a degree that hopefully shows that you know theory.

Re:All you need is expereince

I did exactly what he said. I got my hands on the higher end cisco routers/switches by working at Portland State University (located in Oregon) for $8 an hour. And used that knowledge to get a CCNA. Then used that CCNA and experience to get a job making good money without a college degree.

I got to work underneath a very bright person (lead network engineer), who in my humble opinion provided me with a lot more useful information than a lot of the teachers did when I was a student there. I got to work with a large campus lan that used VLAN's, 802.11b (when it was $700 for a cisco base station), and even Internet2.

Basically, I highly recommend getting a job at a University in the NOC or IT operations, as what the jobs lack in pay is made up with copious amounts of resources and experience.

Rochester Institute of Technology?

RIT? I like the EE program, and a lot of CS students I know like it here.

Re:Rochester Institute of Technology?

If you are going into networking, you'd be better suited to the RIT IT/ANSA program. http://www.it.rit.edu.

Re:Rochester Institute of Technology?

Be warned that the social life at RIT can be rather miserable, especially if you're not the outgoing type. If you go there, be prepared to miss out on some of the best parts of the college experience.

Re:Rochester Institute of Technology?

I kinda like how they actually require you to do co-op here. If it were optional, I'd never end up doing it, though I know how great a thing it is to do.

Graduate School

Study CS in undergrad. Wait until Graduate School to specialize.

Re:Graduate School

I agree with this statement. Undergraduate education in the United States is really geared towards a much more general (and balanced) degree than most people seem to realize. They require you to take things such as Social Sciences, Hard Sciences, and the like, in addition to the stuff that you are going to major in. If you are going to a University for the sole purpose of getting a well paying job, you're probably going to be surprised. Universities don't train you to be good workers, they are supposed to teach you to think and be relatively well balanced intellectually. Most of the other posts in this thread seem to agree with this by suggesting you get certifications and experience if you actually want to do work in Computer Networking.

That said, you can specialize in a specific field while still in the University requirement. As the parent to this post has said, you do this in graduate school. However, graduate school doesn't give you specialization that may be good for the job market. On the contrary, it may make you overspecialized, such that you've gone so far into theory that you no longer have any idea how stuff actually works in the real world. Going the full academic route is really on a good idea if you really care more for the field than you care for money.

Notice: I am am currently working on my PhD, but not in the field of Computer Science, or anything really computer related (I'm actually somewhere between a social science and philosophy). While I do not have first hand experience with graduate studies in Computer Science, I do have experience with graduate school in general, and while the concepts learned are different, the culture and process seems to be similar across all subjects. Your experiences may vary.

Re:Graduate School

I agree with your post completely, but let me make an emphasis:

If you are going to a University for the sole purpose of getting a well paying job, you're probably going to be surprised. Universities don't train you to be good workers, they are supposed to teach you to think and be relatively well balanced intellectually.

In other words, education is not simply job training. But most undergrads are getting mostly the latter. People need to realize that a university's primary responsibility is to its graduate students. They are not optimized for undergraduates. The best undergraduate experience comes from colleges, which generally do not have graduate schools.

This is borne out by the observation that graduates of small, high-quality liberal arts colleges outperform graduates of universities in almost all fields including science and engineering. To rub salt in the wound, many of these schools aren't very selective, taking B or C students and turning out top-notch competitors for spots in grad schools and the job market. (For more information, start here [amazon.com] but be sure to do more research.)

This is not hard to understand when you realize that a genuine, broad education isn't meant to teach you stuff, but to make you smarter -- in exactly the way that learning assembly language or lambda calculus makes you a better coder even if you don't use it or even like it. For me, humanities courses were what really forced me to think faster, harder, and deeper than I imagined possible. NOTE WELL: this never happened with computer science because I was already good at that. The result is that today I'm a well-paid kernel developer and my friends who went to a techy college are unemployed Javaheads.

--
Dum de dum.

Re:Graduate School

Study CS in undergrad. Wait until Graduate School to specialize.

It definitely helps to have a CS degree under your belt. Many companies consider this a more rigorous degree. As an engineer, I also visit campuses to recruit for my company, and individuals with networking type technical degrees with all the certs like CCNA, MCSE, DVDA, etc. are all over the place. We hire for these types of positions, but look a lot more seriously at someone with a CS degree. I'm sure you are one of the ones who actually knows how to think, but many companies think a CS degree is a better indicator of problem solving skills and believe the curriculum is more rigorous.

If you find the right prof in college, you won't have trouble specializing in any niche of CS, including networking. Don't limit yourself to one single aspect of computers this early.

Re:Graduate School

I agree with waiting to specialize. One thing to think about in selecting an undergraduate school is what kind of environment you want, and what you want to do after graduation.

1. Big name research schools often focus on their Ph.D. programs, their undergrad programs may reflect this, you may wind up being taught by grad students (some of whom may be quite good) instead of the big names. Making contact with the big names can be tough.
2. Some of the 4 year schools can offer some good teaching (e.g. Williams, Swathmore, Haverford, Colgate, etc.) and give good preparation.
3. Some of the really big schools may have enormous student to faculty ratios in the introductory classes, and if you aren't a self starter, you may find it hard there.

Re:College Degree in Networking?

I think that the question is about someone who wants to work in the design and engineering of new protocols, not someone who wants to use off-the-shelf tools. If all the inquirer wants is to just be another network tech in a server room somewhere, then he doesn't need college. If he wants to design applications that use all the features of IP:v6, then he should get maybe a Master's. If he wants to design the heir to IP:v6, then he should study a lot of theory and go for a PhD.

The trouble with Slashdot is that sometimes there's a lack of awareness of the gap between the tool-users and the tool-makers - the former, probably due to something of an inferiority complex, are pretty unaware of the realities of the latter.

I know of a few great ones...

• Calcutta University
• Delhi College of Engineering
• Delhi Institute of Technology

CMU

I've heard Carnegie Mellon University is the shizzle. I applied and didn't get in, therefore they must be pretty damn good.

More CMU opinion

CMU is a good school, but you have to be ready for...well, you may not expect everything there.

(Note that I picked up a bachelor's in CS there and liked it quite a bit.)

I found that the school tends to be a bit racially cliquish. There are a phenomenal number of students from wealthy families overseas that attend, and a (surprisingly, to me at least) number of recent immigrants. I never really ran into any bad spirits (with the possible exception of a Saudi student who seemed quite put-upon immediately after September 11th), but Indians tended to hang out with other Indians, Chinese with other Chinese, etc. It *is* a neat way to pick up other culture -- I'm not a huge fan of travel or picking up other cultures other than my monthly National Geographic, but I really enjoyed some of what I learned about folks there.

CMU has a few *extremely* highly-rated schools. For example, their computer science program and their drama programs are both extremely good. This may *sound* really nice. However, it also has drawbacks. When you are going to university with these people, they are really, really, really good. They not infrequently have done decent work in their major. You can't just decide to pick up a drama double major if you're a typical computer science major, because (a) you would probably never be accepted, and (b) if you did get in, you would be decidedly out of your depth unless you had serious prior experience. CMU is a pretty awful place to be if you don't know, for Pretty Darn Certain what you want to do. Changing majors is generally a pain in the ass. (Note that drama is a particularly nasty case -- there are a very few classes for out of majors that generally have a waiting list many times the size of the class). All this *does* mean that you can generally get a very good education in the field you choose, but it is difficult to seriously explore other things.

CMU is not what you would call a party school. It is next to U Pitt, and, in any event, you can find friends on any campus, but I'd call it socially toned down.

CMU (at least CS and ECE) has a decidedly non-Windows bias, which is quite refreshing if you like working on UNIX systems. This takes root in a number of issues (Microsoft hiring a number of professors away, political issues, etc).

CMU is notable for a lot of different research. I'd say that their computer vision stuff is extremely prominent, as is their robotics works. There are some good language people there. Speech synthesis and recognition is big. The philosophy department has a strong AI/symbolic logic slant, which can be very good if you're into that, and bad if you like classical philosophy. They have networking work, but I don't see the network folks being as prominent as at some other universities. There (at least a while ago) was a significant project working on ad-hoc wireless networking. This is a pretty incomplete list. If you take CS up at CMU, be *sure* to take Professor Steven Rudich's Great Ideas In Computer Science class. It is, without compare, the finest class I've ever taken. It gives your brain a *throrough* workout, is a huge amount of fun, and is inspiring as all hell. Prof. Rudich also gives great assignments -- basically, he gives all the information required to figure some past significant idea in computer science out, then gives you the problem as an assignment. It feels *great* when you do it. I wish to God that more profs gave assignments like this. I and other people have even gone back to sit in on lectures he's given for classes we've already taken.

CMU has awful parking. A car will cause you a good deal of grief. Even in university terms, CMU has bad parking.

CMU is in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's average age is extremely high (expecially given the number of universities in the thing). There are a *lot* of old people there. This means that the city shuts down quite early. 24 hour grocery stores and similar are not common. On the other hand, Pittsburgh also has phenomenal

outlook on things

If your true to what you like to do, do it, even if the boat is already full. People that like IT for what it is will do better then most who are there to make a quick buck.

-Kilka

Learn both

Nowadays it would be very much to your benefit to be a jack of both trades (programming and networking) and master of a few more. You may want to look into colleges that have good CS programs and then either tackle networking on the side (start w/ CCNA or something), or see if you can get a job working with the university's networking department. Best way to learn networking is hands-on anyways.

Experience Counts

Not that I know anything, but this applies to everything: experience is vital. Go out and do consulting work to get your hands wet. If you know absolutely nothing start off in tech support somewhere - you will learn very quickly. I don't know about what employers are looking for, but I believe that experience would be way more valuable than a bunch of theory that you may have learned from some junior college prof.

Is that really a college degree?

Not to troll, but is that really a college-level degree? Unless by "work on things" you mean "analyze and design your own version of," I think a trade-school level degree, or some sort of MIS, plus the appropriate certifications might be your thing.

However, by sheer virtue of the fact that you "made it" through a more in-depth degree such as CS or Computer Engineering, you'll open yourself up to wider options, and possibly a higher pay. These degrees mean that, in addition to the basic knowledge, you're capable of handing large, complicated projects (if you have a good Capstone program at the school you look at) and have good problem-solving skills, things that aren't, necessarily, taught at a trade-school or 2-year level institution.

Of course, I'm biased as I'm about 3 months from finishing my B.S. Comp. Engr, and 1 year, 3 months from finishing my M.S. Electrical Engr (Yay, 5-year program!).

Posted Anonymously to protect the names of the (not so) innocent.

The Necessity of Network Engineers??

I really don't feel you have to focus on exclusivity to Network Engineering. I feel that most schools with programs in Network Engineering are not the most recognizable. I suggest you focus on a CS degree or a computer engineering degree. If you perform well in either of these fields you should be able to land almost any job in the industry. Recruiters look at your college record and see what kind of person you are based on your grades, difficulty of classes, and experience gained. The actual information learned is rather insignificant to the kind of person you are.

University of...

I've heard that UoB, University of Bangalore, offers excellent training, and good job placement;)

You can do Cisco at most tech colleges...

They have the entire range of Cisco certification classes.
You also may want to consider something in telecommunications as that covers a lot of networking as well.
And then you can still apply for work outside of IT.

College First, then Certification

I suggest you go with the college/CompSci degree, then spend another 6 months to a year in a certification-type place getting things like A+, Network+, Cisco basic certs, and some linux/unix sysadmin basic certs (the latter cause most linux/unix sysadmins know networking a lot better than most MCSE types since they are network-centric OSs from the get-go). And depending on where you go to college, many colleges let you take tests for *life experience*, so if you got some network-related certs while in college, you might be able to have them credited and not spend as much time.

Cal

The University of California Berkeley is an all around great school for computer and engineering related fields. Although, when I went there I didn't major in CS or EECS, many of my friends graduated from those programs, and then went onto jobs dealing with networking technologies.

Communications Engineering

I'm just about finished Communications Engineering [carleton.ca] at Carleton University [carleton.ca]. If it's really a professional engineering design degree that you're after, and not somethign with more of a technological slant, it's definitely the way to go. It was the first Comm Eng program in Canada (I'm in the third batch to graduate this year), and there's a strong batch of professors in the field. It also helps that Ottawa is 'Silicon Valley North'. Nortel headquarters is here, and various Alcatel and JDS plants, etc. Not to mention all the local start-ups.

We cover everything from distributed network programming, to coding techniques, to circuit design, to protocol implementation, to allocating resources for quality of service. It's great, once you get past all the math and science at the beginning. Introduction to Communications Software was my favourite course ever.

CS isn't such a bad idea

Disclosure: I am a CS professor (in comp bio, not networking), and my department (WUSTL) is well-known for networking-related research.

If you want to get into stuff like protocol design, routing architecture and algorithms, and the other "guts" of designing and building high-speed networks, consider a CS or Computer Engineering degree. Besides the obvious courses in networking per se, you will have the opportunity to study algorithms relevant to the area (e.g. minimum spanning tree, network flows, suffix trees and other fast string matching methods for routing tables); hardware design (for building gigabit-and-up routers and other cool network gear); and design of large software systems, including the principles behind distributed systems like the DNS and peer-to-peer networks.

Depending on where you go and what your interests are, you can also bone up on the underlying math (e.g. queueing theory for protocol design) and maybe even some physics/EE (signal propagation, etc).

Yes, you can probably work your way to a strong practical knowledge of how to build a network, and getting your hands dirty is essential to success. However, the point of a CS degree is (1) breadth in computing fundamentals, which I hope I've persuaded you are relevant to networking, and (2) quickly getting up to speed on how to *think* about networks, independent of any particular protocol or hardware standard.

Oh, and speaking of getting hands dirty... if you go to the right place, you might be able to get on board a networking-related research project!

NJIT...

I would have to agree with some of the other posts... Get an undergrad degree in CS or perhaps IT (I'd recommend CS) and then specialize in graduate school.

Depending upon how good your existing skills in CS are (I'm talking about mostly programming and general computer knowledge), I can recommend NJIT [njit.edu] as a recent (2 weeks ago) BS in CS graduate. If you happen to live somewhere near the NYC metro area, it's not a bad education if you go in with a good background and don't mind teaching yourself when you can't understand the profs (that happens at most tech schools from what I hear). I thought it was rather easy but then again I started really programming in 2nd grade - most of my classmates wouldn't have agreed with me on the ease of the program though. ::thinking to self::...Maybe I should have gone to MIT...

Price is reasonable and if you have high enough GPA/SAT scores you could apply for the Albert Dorman Honors College [njit.edu] - they paid for almost my entire undergraduate tuition, but I must warn you it is a lot of work.

One bad thing I must say though is the quality of campus life - it fucking sucks. ~85% men here and as for the 10-15% left of women... well, you get the idea. However we are about 10 miles due west of the financial district of NYC, about a 30 minute train ride right to Penn Station and there's *plenty* to do in the city, so it' really up to you.

Northface University

I recently went to an open house for a new school called Northface University [northface.edu]. They have an extremely interesting bachelor of science degree in computer science where you will spend 28 weeks working on state of the art IT. The teachers include Terry Halpin and Joe Celko. The school is in its first year of existence. That actually means you would be working directly with the professors as they establish curriculum. The idea is to pack a full bachelors degree in a 28 month intense programming fest.

ask yourself

Here's the real question: do you want to be a scientist or an engineer, or do you want to put stuff together?

Because if you want to STUDY or MAKE things, go to a good CS school: MIT, U of I, Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago (shameless plug, plus U of C will teach you more than just computers). Those are just the top schools off the top of my head, and are necessarily the best schools. I'm sure your own local schools might be good enough. My advice is not to look for a "networking school" as that amount of specialization is not what you want from a university education. See below.

However, if you want to USE things, then get yourself to a trade school, community college, or hell, just teach yourself and get the certification. No need to waste all that money learning about theory, writing papers, etc., when you can just study how to build and maintain networks.

Of course, I'm not saying that this is somehow a 'lesser' pursuit; instead you'll learn more specific skills suited to where you want to work: networking.

--Stephen

Re:ask yourself

Cough. A notable omission from your list includes, at the very least, University of California at Berkeley.

Shameless plug.

Ignore the certification trolls

Firstly, congratulations on wanting to go with a real degree before jumping into the networking field. Its the way to go if you want to have any future beyond "button pushing lackey". Your entry level CCNA job has already been shipped to India, shoot higher.

There may not be a specific "Network Engineer" degree at all universities, what you want is to study Electical Engineering, add in some Mathematics (queue theory, statistics), and top it off with Physics (optics, particle physics). All of these elements are required to actually understand what is going on with networks. Specific topics to concentrate on include circuit design, transmission lines, antennas, material science, compiler design, signal processing, queue theory, and statistics, lots of statistics.

If you want to be the guy who actually writes new RFCs to be used by everybody else, gets hired by companies like Cisco to create new routers or protocols, and be the chief designer on world spanning networks, ignore the certificates for now. Concentrate on getting the background information necessary to understand all the aspects of network design, like speed of light limitations, electrical characteristics of transmission lines, radio circuits and complex mathematics. Picking up a cisco certificate will then take a week of your time when you are ready to join the workforce, and you'll know not just the HOW, but the WHY.

There are a ton of CCIEs on the market today, those without university degrees are flipping burgers or repairing PCs. The interesting work, such as creating optical switches or ultra efficient routers, can only be done by people with advanced degrees. The cert holders sit in the NOC at 3 AM, working their way through a never ending stream of trouble tickets, wishing they had a real degree to get a real job.

That said, from my experiences with US university grads, I'd recommend UC Berkeley, Purdue, CalTech, or UoWashington.

the AC
who just let his CCIE expire, because its worthless in todays job market

Texas A&M University

I know I'm plugging my own university here, but A&M has a really great environment if you want to do networking. Also, the CPSC degree plan is pretty flexible.

Check out the
VNE [tamu.edu] and this list [nsa.gov]
of schools that the NSA has designated as "CENTERS OF ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE IN INFORMATION ASSURANCE EDUCATION" which also largely have good networking programs. This list of course includes Texas A&M University :-). Also, note the NE program at TAMU: http://vnelab.cs.tamu.edu/network_engineering_vne. html

IUPUI

Not a very well known school, but it's a campus of both Indiana University and Purdue. I suggest checking out the Informatics [iupui.edu] major. IUPUI also has a part in Internet2. I'm not sure of the details, as my area is bioinformatics, but there's something under the library :o).

Otherwise, you may also be interested in Purdue's CPT [iupui.edu] program. They offer a Network Engineering Degree. Purdue is perhaps the best engineering/tech university in the midwest, maybe even east of the Mississippi. In fact, maybe even east of California. And unlike IU, their football team doesn't entirely suck.

Plus, Indianapolis has lots of things going for it for someone in the industry. Plenty of large companies that need tech workers (the headquarters of Lilly and Conseco and Thompson Consumer Electronics North America and Simon Property Group - the world's largest mall owner) as well as many regionally strong tech companies.

Yes, I'm a little biased, but for good reason.