Unlike so many of these comments that skirt the question, I'm going to at least give you something to work with.
J2EE being the key here, as JAVA in itself is not much for a resume. JAVA makes it easy to release a project that is completely cross-platform and will run on any machine with a JVM running. J2EE programming gives you tools to make large projects scalable. The key being, that most J2EE jobs will involve large projects. If your products aren't large then theres no reason to use J2EE, and if you're not worried about cross-platform then JAVA itself isn't particularly important to choose. Occam's razor right?
So your goal in learning JAVA and J2EE is to start to think about threading, scalability, and agile development.
In actuality, an employer will hire you because then need something from you that you can do already. However, they will expect you to be able to learn to solve other problems when that project is complete. This is the key in computer science fields. Learn that the language is just a tool, and each one is suited for different solutions and any solution can be done many ways. Never expect to learn the language and be done--instead focus on becoming better at learning the new parts fast.
Heres a good roadmap:
Learn JAVA through any book or website by making some simple applications.
Start to LOVE Java API pages
Then move to making something large AND scalable. (Look into Enterprise Java Beans)
Use your existing knowledge about databases and learn about JDBC. (Check out EntityManager)
Start to learn annotations (Affect deployment descriptors but aren't run by JVM but appear directly in code)
Learn about debugging and more importantly about testing (testing is about producing errors, not successes)
Whats hot in the market is definitely web services. (Check out SOAP)
Build a Web Service
Try using PHP to access the web service. (You'll wanna know about wsdl2php to get that working)
Using NetBeans accessing the web service will be easy with jsp pages (drag and drop easy)
You'll have to learn at least two application servers: Glassfish, JBoss, WebSphere, Tomcat. Learning 2 is the only way you can see how they can be different and write projects that will work with them all. (Say hello to makefiles)
I hope this helps. Those are all skills that will be valuable in todays programming workplace.
I'm not an expert on what colleges offer, but I can share that here at GA Institute of Technology their Calculus III class is specialized for CS majors. We don't take the same one as everyone else, it is more geared to computer science. Also certain threads require certain math courses for that speciality within computer science. Its really a lot to explain, but its the direction that computer science will be going in the future. Check out the link: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/content/view/692/144/
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I hope this helps. Those are all skills that will be valuable in todays programming workplace.
I'm not an expert on what colleges offer, but I can share that here at GA Institute of Technology their Calculus III class is specialized for CS majors. We don't take the same one as everyone else, it is more geared to computer science. Also certain threads require certain math courses for that speciality within computer science. Its really a lot to explain, but its the direction that computer science will be going in the future. Check out the link: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/content/view/692/144/