I’m not close enough to this to have a nuanced view, but I throw this out as seen through the eyes of DS, a sophomore.
He reports that Yale declined to fund WR sections for both classes that he was interested in taking as WR. His take: “I guess we forgot we have a shitzillion dollars.”
I know that Yale can’t spend willy nilly, but this is the second time that I’ve seen this kind of behavior. Much was made of the hiring opportunities that opened up for the CS department with some targeted donations. Well, if Yale knew that it had some catching up to do in CS faculty, it seems short-sighted to have waited for that donation when it could easily have “fronted” some of the spend.
The above sounds more negative than I had intended, but …