Wow, I live in Dallas and the .NET community is very large here (have you attended any of the .NET user group meetings?)

Honestly I find the OSS community to be very weak here since most developers are corporate type and they know either Java or C# or VB.NET. Every OSS (Python) meeting I've ever been to has been populated by back room tinkerers and people that "haven't done it" (tm) so they aren't any help to me with my real world questions and problems.

Now if you expect any college to put out good developers you have the wrong expectations for what college does. They are not Devry (which you should never hire a developer from Devry). Colleges teach theory not practice (which has been beaten like a dead horse on the net).