Is it pedantic? I think Computer Science should be taught by Computer Scientists, which is a different set of people than Software Engineers. I say this AS a Software Engineer.
Every branch of engineering and science has more theoretical and more practical aspects. Look at physics. The people who do the theory and those who design the detectors have pretty different jobs.
And universities, at least the more elite ones, always tend toward the theoretical side in all fields. Which is mostly a good thing so long as it doesn't over-rotate. Whatever language you learn is probably going to be yesterday's news in 10 years. (Unless it's COBOL :-))
[And I say this as an engineer with degrees in non-SW fields.]
It is pedantic because at some schools the degree program for people whose intention is to write software in exchange for money is "computer science" while at other schools it's "software engineering" and at yet other schools it's almost certain to be something else. Which means that arguing about which is the theoretically "correct" term has no relevance, since the names are used so interchangeably by the schools themselves.
