Does a computer science degree matter anymore?

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"For our software engineering roles, we tend to look for people with a strong computer science background who have experience with programming," says Yvonne Agyei, director of Talent and Outreach Programs in Google's People Operations Department. "We need core programming skills, algorithm skills and quantitative analysis. We're looking for people who have majored in computer science or engineering or sometimes math or physics."

Agyei says Google hires computer savvy business majors for other departments, but not software engineering.

"In addition to software engineering roles, we have roles within business, within legal, within finance where having a facility for technology and a passion for technology are important," Agyei says. "It helps if they have familiarity with our products. Having that knowledge is really important regardless of what aspect of the business you go into."

Even with this year's rise in computer science majors, U.S. tech companies say there are still not enough computer scientists and engineers to fill all of their open jobs. That's why tech companies and CIOs often hire computer-savvy business majors instead.

IBM pushes computer training to business majors

In 2004, IBM responded to the drop in computer science degrees by creating the IBM Academic Initiative, which provides free software, training and tools to college professors across disciplines rather than computer science departments. IBM is working with more than 9,000 college faculty worldwide and around 900,000 students.

"As companies have a greater and greater need for computers, communications and software, there's been a decline in students going into IT…The consequence is the supply and demand are not in balance," says Kevin Faughnan, director of IBM's Academic Initiative.

Click to see: Chart showing enrollment in the computer science department went up.

IBM's goal with the Academic Initiative is to encourage college students to become more familiar with IT and how to apply it across industries. With this initiative, IBM is focusing on strengthening the technical underpinning of business majors rather than encouraging more computer science majors.

"The business students don't have the computer science skills – intro to data management or Web 2.0 – because it's not part of their major," Faughnan says. "We try to encourage faculty to be more interdisciplinary."

As part of its initiative, IBM has provided 100-plus universities with Innov8, a simulation game that teaches business process modeling

"It's incumbent on business schools to integrate technology into the curriculum," Faughnan says. "I think of technology not so much as computer science majors, but as a horizontal skill that can be applied across disciplines. For example, you can't do marketing these days without data mining."

CIOs look beyond computer science degree

CIOs say they are hiring more business majors with IT experience than computer science majors.

Henry Eckstein, senior vice president of strategy technology at York Insurance Services Group, says only 10% of the members of his 50-person IT shop have computer science or software engineering degrees. Most of those employees are from Russia.