
Yale Stepping Up Computer Science After Students Demand Better Tech Training - ca98am79
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-26/yale-will-bolster-computer-science-faculty-after-student-outcry
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mcguire
" _The college’s computer-science faculty is about the same size as it was
three decades ago, yet it has 181 undergraduate majors -- about four times as
many as in 2010, Bloomberg reported earlier this month._ "

Sometimes I forget exactly _how small_ some of these major schools are. (For
comparison, UT Austin Computer Sciences has 41 faculty and about 2000
undergraduates.[1])

[1] [https://cns.utexas.edu/about/departments/computer-
science](https://cns.utexas.edu/about/departments/computer-science)

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GFK_of_xmaspast
50:1 is an appalling ratio.

~~~
mcguire
True, but it may look worse than it is. The 41 seems to be tenured and tenure-
track professors; there are about 10 adjuncts and 10 lecturers listed by the
department.

At the time I went through it, there were fewer faculty, but the only class
actually taught by a grad student was the giant introduction to CS; almost all
of the upper-division classes were taught by professors. Class sizes for the
required classes did get a little out of hand, but it wasn't as bad as you
might think.

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ch4s3
>>This fall Yale will import Harvard’s most popular course, an introductory
programming class called CS50 -- a move the department called innovative while
students have characterized it as humiliating.

Oh, tell me more...

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wlesieutre
Harvard and Yale have a rivalry going, so the students are uncomfortable with
the fact that Harvard has a great computer science course and Yale has to
borrow from them.

It makes way more sense than creating a new one from scratch, so props to
Yale's faculty for taking this approach. There are places where experimenting
and working on different teaching methods is a great idea, but I don't think
this is one of them.

~~~
wffurr
I took at look at the syllabus[1] and it sure seems to throw students in the
deep end! The first week's lecture includes threads and event handling. Later
on they cover all kinds of domains such as TCP/IP, tries, and MVC.

Those who survive the pace and workload seem like they will have a broad
introduction to just about every area of CS.

Program By Design[2] used by a bunch of other great CS schools feels gentle by
comparison.

[1]:
[https://cdn.cs50.net/2015/spring/lectures/0/w/syllabus/sylla...](https://cdn.cs50.net/2015/spring/lectures/0/w/syllabus/syllabus.html#lectures)
[2]: [http://www.programbydesign.org/](http://www.programbydesign.org/)

~~~
sukilot
CS50 was famously changed from "deep end" to "shallow end" several years ago,
to make it more accessible to actual newcomers, not just kids who were experts
in high school.

"Threads and events" are covered very very lightly in lecture 0.

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imjk
Yale historically has had a very strong CS program. They just haven't been as
progressive in expanding their curriculum as Harvard has. In fact, they
haven't changed their curriculum or even expanded their department in a decade
or so. Whereas Harvard offers an intro to CS class that's the most popular
undergrad class even for non-CS majors. It's time for Yale to catch up now.

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brudgers
This pretty much irrelevant to the industry. 181 undergrads means about 50 CS
degrees a year. If they double the department over the next 10 year's that's
about 250 more degrees...half the Fortune 500 can't get one.

Yale is a great school, but it's not where the important changes in education
are happening. What it (or another Ivey) does doesn't scale out to the Land
Grant's in the US or technical universities around the world. It's like the
doings of the UK 's Crown Prince...highbrow celebrity gossip.

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chatmasta
For more responsible reporting, see here:

[http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/04/10/up-close-tech-
life-...](http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/04/10/up-close-tech-life-after-
yale/)

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PhrosTT
Reminds me of 2003 when I told a Georgetown rep at a college fair I wanted to
major in Computer Science. She chuckled a bit and said "we don't have that" as
if somehow I was the idiot...

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mark212
anyone know the size of Stanford's CS faculty and number of undergrad majors?
For comparison's sake, it'd be interesting to find out.

~~~
WalterGR
[http://www-cs.stanford.edu/faculty](http://www-cs.stanford.edu/faculty) lists
55 regular faculty members.

[http://www-cs.stanford.edu/undergraduate_students](http://www-
cs.stanford.edu/undergraduate_students) lists 808 students.

