16 Mbps is pretty good, better than what I have certainly. However, since you're going with cable it's also subject to how many other people are using it at the same time in your area; the more people using it, the slower it gets, because you are all in effect sharing the same line.

As for universities, they tend to use high-speed T1 or T3 lines, but again, they're shared across a huge network. I was at my university the other day and downloaded a 70 MB file in about 10 seconds, it was so fast, but that's because classes aren't on and almost nobody (relatively) was on campus. Normally it'd take me much longer, and often it's extremely slow, worse than dial-up.