I think I can answer this, because I studied "Software Engineering" which was a 4 year degree (with honours), accredited by the Australian Institute of Engineer

I think I can answer this, because I studied "Software Engineering" which was a 4 year degree (with honours), accredited by the Australian Institute of Engineers. A bunch of friends at my University studied "Computer Science", a 3 year degree (no honours option). Early on our subjects had a lot of overlap - Java Programming 1, Database 1, Networking basics (TCP), etc. etc. I also had a healthy dose of Eng. Maths, and electrical eng. theory. As the years rolled on I had subjects like Eng Ehtics, real time programming, software maintenance project, OS design, large scale system design, and I took a digital electronics minor (could have chosen game programming or OS design). Towards the end I did a final year engineering project which was a full year project with 16 team members, working for a real client, building a massive piece of software from start to finish. So my degree was a whole lot of Eng. stuff wrapped around CS. When finished my friends could sling code and make software. I could do that, but I could also design a bunch of stuff, and had a lot more theory to back everything up. At a very high level, I'd say Computer Science is more about "just do the work" like a welder on a bridge or a mechanic on an F1 race team. Where-as Software Engineering is people who designed/tested/validated the bridge, or the engineers who actually designed the F1 engine/chassis/aerodynamics. I see the difference play out in the workplace all the time when CS grads (or people with no tertiary education in Software) want to get right into slinging code, and they get totally lost building so many trees until the forest is really thick. Software Engineering folks step back and actually design the forest before they build trees. This also plays out when trying to fix stuff, or even root cause analysis. Doers want to get on with doing (welding, changing spark plugs) while Engineers want to get on with understanding what needs to be done, then figuring out how best to do it.