Career options for IT professionals

Given that this year has been bad -- the worst ever since the IT boom -- in terms of placement for new IT professionals, what are your opinions on career options for aspiring IT professionals.

What do you think? Is Information Technology, a legitimate engineering discipline at all? Does IT matter? (This question was highly debated on ISWORLD recently..)

Can someone hope to have a career by studying just IT or should s/he have some other domain knowledge. In which case, is it better to first study the domain first and then get a diploma in IT from some computer centre, or should study IT separately?

Will the new career options ahead come from the major companies or will they come from startups and an increase in the culture of risk capital and venture funding?

Is it good to invest in higher education in IT? Or it is "safer" to just get a job and stick to it?

Looking forward to a productive discussion on this.