That's not true. Even during the boom, many people who got engineering degrees at second and third tier schools couldn't find jobs as engineers.

When I graduated in 2002 from a smaller state university I was the only BSEE out of 12 (I think) who had a job or even prospects. The rest of the engineering department wasn't much better.

I turned down Rose-Hulman because I would have had to make up $12k+ per year in loans and wages to afford it.

Edit: I would like to add that, despite the complaints here about not having enough programmers, the current unemployment rate for fresh BSCS grads is about 7.8%.

This is because people are not looking for just any programmers, they are looking for very skilled programmers with a specialty in what their company does. Which is a hard ticket to fill the majority of the time.