I think that microelectronics engineering is treated as a separate subfield from electrical engineering. I went to RIT which AFAIK is reasonably well-respected

I think that microelectronics engineering is treated as a separate subfield from electrical engineering. I went to RIT which AFAIK is reasonably well-respected for MicroE, and while it wasn't my major, I have some friends who were in it, and they're all getting paid pretty well at Samsung and AMD and Intel. Even 15 years ago, anyone who graduated would be insta-hired somewhere for a reasonable salary. There were a lot of specialty courses for MicroE that weren't in EE, in addition to projects in the teaching fab and such. I recorded video for classes with distance-learning students as a student job, some of which were MicroE, so I basically got paid to audit Semiconductor Metrology taught by Dr. Lynn Fuller (who founded the MicroE program and apparently retired last year).