Honestly though, will this really mean anything a year after graduating? Sincere question. I don't have a CS degree (or any bachelors degree) though I am pursuing one. The drumbeat seems to be that the most important lessons one learns with a BS in CS is the algorithms classes. Would a BA not deliver those classes to its students?
As a recruiting manager, I never really made any distinction between BA/BS/B.Sc/whatever. A degree from a good school with good grades is good enough, it isn't critical what the degree is called exactly. CS isn't Physics where you should have lots of years of study to actually be able to do something useful.
To add a frame of reference, Berkeley also gives a BA in Math.
The difference between BA in CS vs. BS in EECS (there is no BS in CS!) is that BA CS is more grounded in mathematics, algorithms, logic etc... BS EECS is more grounded in hardware/engineering. Nonetheless, all have to take courses in algorithms, computer architecture, machine structures, etc... The rest is up to you. You can do a BA with somewhat of a hardware focus, or a BS with a software focus. You can take whatever classes you'd like on top of that.
Otherwise, there's no difference. As for getting a job, getting a good internship matters far more than what your degree and where you went to school. A good school will help you find a good internship. Just for $deity's sake, do something technical over the summer vacations (instead of doing nothing or working at the mall).
For what it's worth, interview questions also tend to be more focused on discrete mathematics and algorithms than they are on systems and hardware, so a BA might actually prepare you better.
Finally, the education is for your own sake, not for the sake of your employer.
And why couldn't you just take the CS classes that the BS requires anyway? The BA/BS non-major classes are the ones where the BS/BA are going to matter for CS. Do you have more background knowledge in Arts? or Sciences?
I certainly depends on the school, but at least as important as Algorithms, course-wise, are Architecture, Operating Systems, Networking, and in some fields, Numerical Analysis. I'd say a BA with those first three is just as good most BS'es. If you're looking to work in industry building real systems (not just gluing Java API's together), you need at least a cursory understanding of those topics, which a BA may not provide.
It matters some. I've done some hiring, and in a technical field where the BS is commonly done a BA makes me a little skeptical. Like you couldn't handle or avoided the spectrum of harder science classes. Might not be fair, and it wouldn't rule you out in my book, but it matters some.
You can't judge this simply based on the degree name. A lot depends on the school and how they do things. I'm not entirely sure but I think my CS degree is a BA. But I've taken enough high level math classes to have a BS in math (I had to pick either or, they wouldn't give me both), and I also took all the hard CS courses: Algorithms, OS, Compilers, Computer Graphics. If having a BA gives you pause for a candidate, I would strongly suggest you simply ask them what courses they took.
