Yale Ends CS50 Partnership With Harvard

After ten years, Yale University has ended its partnership with Harvard to provide a version of Computer Science 50.

The jointly taught computer science class — which piloted at Harvard in 1989 before launching at Yale in 2015 — was sunset because of financial challenges.

According to Ozan Erat, a lecturer in Yale’s computer science department who taught CS50 at Yale in the fall, the course was originally funded by a ten-year grant from a donor. That funding ended in 2024.

“The course has many features that require financial support well above other courses,” Erat wrote in a statement to The Crimson.

Though the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Sciences helped subsidize part of the costs, the school raised wages for undergraduate course assistants after they threatened to strike in 2022. With higher costs and no donation to back the program, Erat said the class was going to be phased out.

“While the official decision to discontinue CS50 was finalized more recently, the winding down of its dedicated funding signaled this outcome was increasingly likely,” he wrote.

Listed as CPSC 100: “Introduction to Computing and Programming” at Yale, the course served as a large introductory computer science course for students without extensive coding backgrounds.

Yale second-year Charlie A. Stemerman, who took the class last year, said the cancellation came as a surprise.

“I thought CS50 was an institution at both Yale and Harvard, and they had a very developed framework,” Stemerman said.

David J. Malan ’99, who heads CS50 at Harvard, saw the joint class as a way to encourage interactions between Harvard and Yale students.

“That two universities would partner to offer a shared experience for students on campuses, while leveraging technology in just the right way to facilitate those in-person interactions, seems a testament to the value of on-campus experiences for students, coupled with a new form of experience that technology enables,” Malan wrote in a statement.

At Harvard, CS50 is offered during the fall and spring semesters while Yale provides only a fall edition. Both institutions require one lecture and section per week. At Yale, students watch recorded lectures Malan gave at Harvard.

“It was very isolating and not super connected, because the whole class is on Zoom at Yale,” Stemerman said. “I felt like it also just moved very quickly on a computer compared to in person.”

“It is bizarre in that way where you don’t show up to lecture — you watch a YouTube video online,” said Yale second-year Asya H. Tarabar, a former CS50 student and course assistant.

“They made all the efforts they could to make it feel like a real class,” she added.

CS50 Lunches, Puzzle Day, and a CS50 Fair were held at both schools, and Yale students had the option to travel to Harvard to attend the annual CS50 Hackathon at the end of each semester.

According to Erat, adapting the Harvard course for Yale’s academic calendar and policies proved challenging. Malan wrote that the initial transition itself was a major hurdle.

“Convincing folks that we could and should be collaborating all the more educationally, too, was perhaps the greatest challenge,” Malan wrote.

As CS50’s partnership with Yale ends, the course is also being offered at Oxford. Provided through Oxford’s Department of Continuing Education, an online version of the class is available to a small group of adults with live sessions for Oxford locals.

—Staff writer Xinni (Sunshine) Chen can be reached at sunshine.chen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sunshine_cxn.

—Staff writer Danielle J. Im can be reached at danielle.im@thecrimson.com.