After a decade of partnership with Harvard, Yale’s CS50 Cours will no longer be offered from the fall of 2025 due to limited funding and an expanding computer service.
Yolanda Wang & Julia Levy
Staff journalists
Julia Levy, contributory photographer
“Introduction to computer science and programming”, better known by its Harvard course code of “CS50”, will not return to the fall of 2025.
According to Ozan Erat, the last monthly instructor at Harvard University, was canceled during a monthly faculty meeting after faced budgetary challenges, according to Ozan Erat, Yale’s last instructor for the course. However, the administrators expect the size of the expansion teachers of the IT department will allow students to take introduction courses more specialized in future semesters.
“I think Yale CS has benefited a lot from the CS50,” wrote Erat. “I met students who decided to enter CS after taking the CS50 to have fun during their first year. CS50 was a fun course. »»
Since Yale began to offer the course In 2015CS50 has always seen registration numbers in the hundreds and was often the largest class in the department. While students mainly look at conferences via the course websiteThey attended the sections in person and the office hours led by undergraduate learning assistants, or Ulas.
However, according to Erat, the original gift that made CS50 possible ended in June 2024, and the cost of employment of so many Ulas for the course had become unbearable.
“From the start, we have used a generous gift from someone (I don’t know who) for many years, but it ended in June 2024,” wrote Erat. “(The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) helped us to cover our costs (in the fall of 2024), but we had to reduce a lot of things. Maintaining the CS50 to Yale became difficult. »»
In 2022, after Ulas for the course threatened For higher wages, the IT department increased the weekly salary limit for CS50 ULAs from 7.5 hours to 10 hours. In 2023, the course instructions team presented an artificial intelligence chatbot known as “Duck CS50“, Who served as a virtual learning assistant to complete the 40 ULS of the course.
According to Erat, these two developments have posed challenges to the decreasing financial resources of CS50.
“We also use a lot of ULA force for this class,” wrote Erat. “Ulas regular operates for 7.5 hours, but we paid our 10 hours of Ulas payment. Thanks to the duck CS50, we had fewer students in office hours and the excessive quantity of the ULA force became another financial burden. »»
According to Theodore Kim, director of undergraduate studies in computer science, the end of CS50 is a reflection of broader changes in the department, including a wider range of students according to computer courses and a teacher size that has More than doubled since 2015.
Kim underlined the new introductory offers such as “Python for the Human Sciences and the Social Sciences”, “AI for future presidents” and “Language of programming C and Linux”.
“We now have people and expertise to provide more targeted pedagogy to the specific interests of students,” Kim wrote to The News. “Students can choose the course that best suits their needs, rather than trying to get what they want from a giant course.”
Kim also noted that for students always interested in taking CS50, the content of the course is available for free online.
In an e-mail at the old CS50 ULAS, Erat wrote that the department will offer an “improved” version of the course “Introduction to programming” for autumn and spring semesters.
However, some students and staff fear that the end of CS50 will reduce opportunities for new students from under-represented communities to get involved in IT.
“CS50 was the space of the department where I felt as if I belonged,” wrote Wini Aboy ’25, an old CS50 ULA. “I fear that without CS50, we will lose part of the diversity it introduces into the major.”
While Yale moves to more specialized IT introductory courses, David Malan, who teaches CS50 at Harvard, will focus on a new partnership With the University of Oxford. However, Malan returns to his partnership with Yale as a “proof of perfect concept” that higher education can be more collaborative.
“That two schools, no less compete, could come together in this educational way a remarkable thing,” Malan wrote to The News. “I don’t think the world only needs one computer course. But I don’t think we need thousands, each partitioned in institutions. »The Yale IT department was founded in 1969.