I suspect Sussman told only the more palatable part of the story. Students pay for those degrees, so they have a big say in what they buy. It's likely that both EECS majors and non-EECS majors who took EECS courses believed the four course EECS basic prerequisite sequence no longer served their needs as well as it once did. Profs have only so much power to shape minds, especially if the minds are paying over a quarter of a million dollars for the only product the profs are selling.