These schools have huge endowments that can fund their entire operation. Cancelling a popular class because it can't get funding is just a smokescreen for school politics. Someone wants to take things in a different direction.
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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According to Yale's website their operating budget is about 6 billion of which 2 billion comes from the endowment. That seems a bit low, but they are probably putting some money back into the endowment to grow it further.
I'm not saying they couldn't afford to keep this one class (surely they could) but funding the whole operation with just the endowment would fail in the long term.
Nobody understands endowments. Universities only use the interest earned from them as investments. And Apple makes more revenue in a quarter than Harvard has in their entire endowment - and theirs is the largest.
I'm in the middle of CS50 right now. Wow. This is a huge loss for everybody. I'll be archiving the 2025 course for posterity.
CS50 is produced by Harvard and is opencourseware (free) that isn't going away.
What is changing is that Yale won't be offering CS50 courses going forward, seemingly due to funding issues.
Yale is broke? Where does all that student loan money go then? Honest question
Into the pockets of the 1%. Our entire country is designed for the 1% to fleece every thing we do for their own profit. Thats why our defense budget is out of control. That is why healthcare costs are out of control. That is why we spend the most per student on education with terrible results.
The same shit happens in Russia. The oligarchs steal money from everyone and everything. With Elon Musk on the throne, the US is now every bit as corrupt and broken as Russia is.
Yale is not broke. Yale is sitting on a $40 billion endowment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
I assume Yale isn't broke but idk. Universities are just like any other business where they will cut products that aren't making money or performing as well as others. The article talks about the course needing many teacher assistants to field student questions and hold labs, and that originally these costs were covered by a donation which has now run out.
It also could just be some internal politics and blaming it on financials is the public reason.
But you're not wrong that student tuition costs should theoretically go to the courses they sign up for
Good news. After reading the article, it seems like the content and the course will still exist, it is just that Yale has decided that it cant afford to pay ULA's to support the class.
For those who just want to learn, the course content can still be found here: https://www.edx.org/cs50
Sad. This encouraged me to try. I’m stuck on week five currently and I would have never even tried learning to program without it.
Also damn week four was so hard, I’m really getting beat on understanding the video on week 5.
It’s only the Yale version that is ending. The original course from Harvard with Prof. Malan is still going strong
I'm a bit confused, it sounds like Yale will no longer offer CS50, but unless I'm misunderstanding, won't Harvard still be producing the course?
Yale? I thought Harvard did the course?
It’s only the Yale version that is ending. The original in Harvard is going nowhere.