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Programming Education

This Was CS50: Crying Poor, Yale To Stop Offering Harvard's Famed CS50 Course (yaledailynews.com) 48

Posted by EditorDavid from the throwing-an-exception dept.
Slashdot has been covering Harvard's legendary introductory programming course "CS50" since it began setting attendance records in 2014.

But now long-time Slashdot reader theodp brings some news about the course's fate over at Yale. From Yale's student newspaper: After a decade of partnership with Harvard, Yale's CS50 course will no longer be offered starting in fall 2025.... One of Yale's largest computer science courses, jointly taught with Harvard University, was canceled during a monthly faculty meeting after facing budgetary challenges. [Yale's endowment is $40+ billion]... Since Yale started offering the course in 2015, CS50 has consistently seen enrollment numbers in the hundreds and was often the department's largest class.... According to [Yale instructor Ozan] Erat, the original [anonymous] donation that made CS50 possible ended in June 2024, and the cost of employing so many undergraduate learning assistants for the course had become unsustainable.
theodp reminds us that CS50 and its progeny "will continue to live on in all their glory in-person and online at Harvard and edX."

This Was CS50: Crying Poor, Yale To Stop Offering Harvard's Famed CS50 Course More | Reply

This Was CS50: Crying Poor, Yale To Stop Offering Harvard's Famed CS50 Course

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  • But if the course is so popular and hence plenty of student money coming in, why does it need donations to function? What's so different about this course compared to any other?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by neoRUR ( 674398 )

      Says right there, " According to [Yale instructor Ozan] Erat, the original [anonymous] donation that made CS50 possible ended in June 2024"
      So basically, 'hey our funder is not giving us money, if you want to continue this, give us more money. '
      Who cares if it's for the betterment of humanity.

      • Says right there, " According to [Yale instructor Ozan] Erat, the original [anonymous] donation that made CS50 possible ended in June 2024" So basically, 'hey our funder is not giving us money, if you want to continue this, give us more money. ' Who cares if it's for the betterment of humanity.

        Somewhere along the way, society decided that the betterment of humanity is turning a profit. There is no other measurable way to determine how humanity is doing. We're numbers on a giant spreadsheet, and that spreadsheet says profit is good. Everything that impacts profit in a negative way is bad. Period. There is no other meaning to life. Dollars. Dollars going up. That's it. Period.

        I don't agree with it, but that's the way it is. And those of us that don't have our hands on the controls can't do a thing

  • Yale’s endowment earned a 5.7% investment return, representing $2.3 billion in investment gains.

    Shut up and buy, buy, buy, send more money.

  • It used to be that good education was only for those born rich. Meritocracy has had its day, its time for a new era, which is actually a very old era! An era of Aristocracy! (muffled cheering and joyful harrumphing)

    • Re:Why not have rich kids rule the world? (Score:5, Informative)

      by commodore73 ( 967172 ) on Sunday February 09, 2025 @05:57PM (#65154205)
      Meritocracy cannot exist where some are born with hundreds of millions or even billions (and soon, trillions) of dollars and the system is not fair.

      The society you have been sold is a lie.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by alvinrod ( 889928 )
        You act as though a rich upper class is a modern invention that will prevent anyone of merit from rising above their station. The history of America (as well as many other places) suggests this is not true as many of the country's greatest fortunes came from modest means and even today many of our millionaires did not come from any great wealth. Many are immigrants and even among the billionaire class [forbes.com] many were not born in America.

        Wealth does make it easier to succeed, but it is no guarantee of it. A man
        • I think you've misinterpreted me, but I'm not sure how or how to correct it. Of course USA didn't invent greed, but it promotes it. Yes, there is huge opportunity in the USA, more for some than others, especially those that start with wealth and education. That was my point; pretty hard to refute.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pjt33 ( 739471 )

          Many are immigrants and even among the billionaire class many were not born in America.

          You do realise that money exists outside of the USA, right? Elon Musk may not have been born in North America, but he wasn't the son of a subsistence farmer. The other two people named in the title of your link are both sons of engineers.

        • Don't forget, you can be a terrible student at Wharton and come out on top, as long as you're rich. Well, to get into Wharton in those days you needed money... There is not a meritocracy in place, never has been, and might never be one. If you're rich you get a huge leg up. So many "self made" wealthy people really weren't self made, or they took unethical shortcuts, or they got really really lucky. This includes all of the billionaires around today (or those claiming it).

          The American public has been fe

      • Right, a better one would be if wealth was entirely collected by the state and redistributed "fairly"... Is that where you're going with this?

      • Just stop. Of course it can, it's been the history of the US, and, indeed, the western world.
        • So...where you start has nothing to do with where you end up; we all face the same odds? A white guy born into wealth and property and education in the USA has the same chances as someone born into an impoverished country? I don't follow your lack of logic. I'm nor arguing for redistribution of wealth, BTW.

  • Yeah (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 ) on Sunday February 09, 2025 @04:14PM (#65154033) Homepage

    Because Yale has never been a "good" school - not in my lifetime anyway. Ivy League schools are *not* where you go to get the best education. You go to them to get the best connections, because that is apparently all that matters in this garbage world humans have created.

    • Re:Yeah (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Sunday February 09, 2025 @04:25PM (#65154039) Homepage Journal

      Connections have been more important than talent as far back as our species goes. Even in hunter-gatheror days, having the favor of tribal leaders went quite a long way.

      We are a social species, therefore, your social skills are of paramount importance. Talent and brilliance matter too, but, if the social skills are too bad then those won't get you very far.

      You can get frustrated and call it garbage if that pleases you. There is nothing wrong with such disapproval. But it won't do any good. If you want to improve your lot, a better investment of your time would be the acquisition and refinement of your social skills (including and especially negotiation skills), and going out to make connections with successful people.

      Learn, adapt, thrive. It's that simple.

    • Re:Yeah (Score:5, Informative)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday February 09, 2025 @04:28PM (#65154049) Journal
      Is there data to back that up? A friend of mine got a PhD from a regular university in the US, and much later in life decided to get a Master's in a related field, at an Ivy League school. He said the difference was night and day: the quality of the courses, the teachers, the support offered, the facilities at his disposal... all so much better at the Ivy League uni. Just anecdotal and the quality may vary wildly per school and per subject, but I'd be very surprised if these schools offer merely average quality of education.
      • Your friend was in a graduate program. That’s where the top universities absolutely shine - the reputation to draw top professors and top research programs, and the $ to pay them, in addition to nice facilities and extra staff. The classes are likely to be straight-up better.

        Undergrad class content is different. The academic content, and the teaching quality, of a 100-level class at Yale is likely to be almost identical to that of a local community college.

        • Your friend was in a graduate program. That’s where the top universities absolutely shine - the reputation to draw top professors and top research programs, and the $ to pay them, in addition to nice facilities and extra staff. The classes are likely to be straight-up better.

          Undergrad class content is different. The academic content, and the teaching quality, of a 100-level class at Yale is likely to be almost identical to that of a local community college.

          I would back up this sentiment. I went to a top-10 engineering school for grad school. The top professors didn't care about undergrad courses, and many paid their way out of required teaching using their grant money. Many of those who actually lectured left all the work to the TAs. I had one professor I TAed for who never bothered to come to proctor or grade the final exam. Grad classes were somewhat but not much better. It's not the course or the professor that made good grad courses good. It was th

  • Yale isn't poor. It's annual endowment returns are bigger than many countries' entire economies. But it's not offering this class because it's too expensive to pay the requisite number of TAs their (often subsidized) slave wages.

    Meanwhile, places like Harvard, MIT, and Yale charge in excess of 50% for overhead off of research grants (https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/09/metro/trump-nih-cuts-massachusetts/) and are screaming bloody murder at the prospect of being capped at 15%.

    Administrative staff (as oppo

    • You're talking about Yale screaming bloody murder like they're wrong. The "overhead" as you put it, pays for everything from the facilities operations, to the IT, to the libraries and even the compliance and administration. Every reasonable article on the topic, including the one you linked, talks about the fact that making this change will significantly hamper necessary research.

    • UCLA as far back as 1974, was said (more than one source, one with direct experience, responsible investigator who I was working for) to take 50% overhead from grant funding.

      • Yeah man. Eisenhower was in on the ground floor of it and warned everyone in 1961. Back when we weren't $35 trillion in the hole, few people cared. Now that we are $35 trillion in the hole and people feel the monopoly money inflating in their wallets, there appears to be less of a mood for putting up with slush funds off of taxpayer money.

  • How much are the undergrads being paid for 10 hours per week each if the school can't make this work? I might want to apply.

  • 2nd largest endowment on the planet (Score:3)

    by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Sunday February 09, 2025 @11:46PM (#65154605)

    Yale's endowment is over US$40 billion and has one of the best performing portfolios among it's higher education peers.

    Surely, they could give back a bit to the community, eh?

  • If the course employed "so many undergraduate learning assistants", that tells me that the way it's being taught isn't sinking in.

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