This isn’t correct in a wide variety of circumstances. The top end of schools have networking opportunities that are in a league of its own, but school based n

This isn’t correct in a wide variety of circumstances. The top end of schools have networking opportunities that are in a league of its own, but school based networking/affiliation remains important regionally, especially for large state universities. I’ve definitely known instances where the deciding factor for someone in a hiring situation was they went to the same university as the boss (decades apart), and the regional alumni networks of some of these universities can be influential. Now it’s true the further down the prestige chain you go the less it matters, but saying that networking via meetups Birmingham is equivalent to the network you’d get via having gone to U. Alabama or Auburn seems unlikely.