> Teach them how to build networks and truly understand network protocols. I don't know how the situation is in the US, but in my country network engineering i

> Teach them how to build networks and truly understand network protocols. I don't know how the situation is in the US, but in my country network engineering is actually quite a popular field of study. (we have college level education in network engineering). The one thing that stands out though is that it's mostly done by youngsters who have either sysadmin experience, or worked in IT before that. Almost everyone who comes from high school goes into Software Engineering. I think this is mainly because networking is quite an invisible field so to speak. Many people don't even know your job exists, and many young people only see the shiny hip side of it. (being Software Engineering). Being good at network engineering is hard, especially once you get past entry level work and actually start being responsible for designing large-scale networks. Mainly because building a network is a major financial investment where garuanteeing performance is hard without either a ton of experience, or a shitton of lab time. this kind of work pays very, very well though.