Those are good suggestions.  I would also throw in to just get involved in a developer community.  You can increase your own knowledge, share your knowledge with others and meet some great contacts while doing it.  The last one is really important.  Like everything, who you know can really help.

I got started by helping others on the gotdotnet.com forums many years ago when they first started.  It helped me sharpen my skills (explaining things to others), I met some great people, I was eventually awarded as an MVP, which led to new contacts, etc and it all went from there.  Community participation!  Blogging is another great form of community participation, just from a slightly different angle.  :)

That's an excellent suggestion, Erik!  Being involved in a community - no matter your profession - allows you to learn and teach ... and network, network, network!  Very important

Community is huge.  I'm actually of a mind for developer careers that "apprenticing" yourself to skilled developers is the way to pass up your colleagues in leaps and bounds.  College is good for teaching the basics, but the vast majority of programs from which new graduates come interviewing with me don't have the depth of skills that I'm looking for.  I can't tell you how many bachelors candidates walk in the door without ever having touched a relational database.

I tend to disagree on the importance of a degree right away.  If you can work full-time, and have the discipline to go to school nights and weekends and earn your bachelors at the same time you'll be much better off financially.  The cost of college is outrageous for what you get out of it in my humble opinion... How can you expect the youth of America to be happy, productive people when you start them off in the game of life 40-80k in the hole financially?

Online communities are great and a lot of people are able to build a reputation and a network around them. Usergroup meetings where people meet in real life are also good. Face to face conversations are high bandwidth and a lot of times one can learn a lot from casual conversation at them.
I think that students can also create their own projects with friends to demonstrate that they can both handle larger projects and work in teams. Contests like the Imagine Cup (http://imaginecup.com/default.aspx) give students deadlines to work towards and can get them a lot of attention.

Eric - As long as they get that degree, I'll feel better. :)

Alfred - As soon as I posted this entry, I was said to myself, "I forgot to mention Imagine Cup."  There I go and talk about Summer of Code but say nothing about Imagine Cup.  That's another great one.