Background: I figure it is time to head back to school and get another degree. My medium/longish term goal is to get a Masters in Operations Research. However, one of the requirements of the program is knowing an 'advanced computer language'. My only formal education was in ADA and FORTRAN, neither of which do I have a decent modern compiler (at home, they are available at work but I don't want to have to use work assets for homework). So, I figure this is a good time to get an undergrad degree in something programming related also.

I do some programming at work, but it is a means to an end. I do a lot of data analysis, so I just sling something together in an Excel Macro (or MySQL and a lot of painful SQL statements if I hit data limits) and roll with it. It isn't pretty and very brute force. Learning how to do something more elegant and stand alone would be awesome. End goal would be to learn how to design and build a decent data analysis tool for a specific file formatted input to do analysis on the road and then a database/web interface for when analyzing data at home. However, the analysis is the final product, not the programs used to achieve that analysis.

Question: What is the real difference between a computer science and software engineering degree? Which would probably be better in my case? I am leaning toward a software engineering degree (my other degrees are engineering based), but advice from people who actually know the difference would be useful.

Thanks for any advice!
Tim