My 3-year-plan Cisco cert recommendation for my best friend would be:

For your fresh out of school friend, I think it would valuable to get some experience under his belt and become comfortable with Cisco tests and the knowledge required for each at the Associate and Professional levels. At that point, he can decide if CCIE or CCDE or neither is going to work for him. As for CCA, he needs 7 more years after this scenario to even be a candidate. IMO, CCDE has been a long time coming from the last time Cisco tried to introduce an expert design cert. For every professional level, there was an expert level; except for design. I think this is in a big way a money-maker for cisco and maybe not as beneficial unless you market it correctly. How have networks been designed up to now if no CCDEs were around? da/na, dp/np, and ie have done this and now they are also able to capitalize on their design experience and transition into roles that now have the word "architect" in them :-); for another $1,400 of course..