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?

Comments

You also...

[Anonymous Coward]

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. :)

It's not about the school...

[GuyZero]

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.

All you need is expereince

[Nicholas_D]

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

Re:All you need is expereince

[m0rningstar]

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

[geekschmoe]

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?

[Cowclops]

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

Graduate School

[Reverend528]

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

Re:Graduate School

[Thomas M Hughes]

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

[eap]

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.

I know of a few great ones...

[terraformer]

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

Learn both

[Gunfighter]

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.

Is that really a college degree?

[Anonymous Coward]

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??

[lake2112]

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...

[Unnngh!]

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

College First, then Certification

[Supp0rtLinux]

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.

ask yourself

[illuminatedwax]

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

Ignore the certification trolls

[anticypher]

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

IUPUI

[Pionar]

Not a very well known school, but it's a campus of both Indiana University and Purdue. I suggest checking out the Informatics 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 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.