The Blue Book is dead, long live the Blue Book

Mark Zurolo ’01MFA

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Pre-digital Yale College alums will remember the feel of their well-thumbed, highlighted, dog-eared copy of the Yale College Programs of Study, the course catalog better known as the Blue Book. But students today have turned largely to online resources to choose courses: last year, fewer than half of them even bothered to pick up the free print copies available to them. So this year, for the first time since 1715, there will be no printed catalog of Yale College courses. Registrar Gabriel Olszewski says he heard no complaints from students about discontinuing the Blue Book; the laments from faculty, staff, and alumni were “in the single digits.”