BA or BS in Computer Science?

[CBK]

First, I just joined your forum, and I have to acknowledge it is quite a nice community you guys have here (and that's the reason I came by to try and and get my doubts cleared)

I'm uncertain of which undergraduate title I should aim for. I'm interested in becoming a Software Engineer/Programmer, call it however you want. However, my college no longer offers SE as an undergraduate title so I've decided that I'll get my SE title as my masters somewhere else after I finish my bachelors degree.

However, that leaves me with two options. I may go for the BA in Computer Science in which I don't require that many math courses (such as Discrete Math II, Introduction to Probability and Calculus III are not required) and take 3 electives in other programming languages or I may choose to go for the BS in Computer Science and get a stronger math base.

Currently I have the credits to role out a minor in Psychology (I took some classes in psychology because I liked it a lot) and that would help me finish the BA faster than I could finish the BS. However, I am uncertain whether it is a better option to take the BS or if the BA is an equal (or even better considering I may take additional programming languages) option as a Bachelor title.

So tl;dr version would be, what would look better in paper, the BS or the BA degree?

[Cabhan]

First off, I am not an employer or a college counselor, but here's my two cents:

A degree in "Software engineering" is relatively rare. Many programmers with a college education have a degree in Computer Science and that works just fine for them. A Master's degree may not be necessary in any case, but if you want one (and that's fine; I just got mine), doing it in Computer Science is still just fine for any programming job I've ever heard of.

As far as a BA vs. a BS, as far as courses, the ones you listed may not be incredibly important. Calc 3 (which I assume is multivariable calculus) is not particularly necessary as a programmer. Discrete mathematics is useful from the perspective of understanding numerical bases and as an introduction to a new type of math, but it depends on your job about whether you will be doing lots of permutations and combinations and things like that. For probability, it will never hurt to have that base.

I do, however, feel that there is a bit of a bias against those with BAs. Seeing a BA in Computer Science does kind of make the employer pause and wonder, I feel. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I would probably recommend going for the BS.

[Bemk]

Mathmatics get really interested when working for example graphics, databases and encryption. I'd take the stronger maths base.

But in the end it is YOU who has to decide, and I'm only a student Technical Informatics at the local university (Doing graphics, embedded, multi-threaded, encryption, databases, IPC and Operating Systems, is what I've see so far around me).