[Software] Yale ends free Adobe Creative Cloud access

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Yale will discontinue free access to Adobe Creative Cloud software, ending a policy that provided students, faculty, and staff with tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro at no cost.

In an email sent Friday, Yale Information Technology Services, or ITS, announced that the University would end its enterprise-wide free licensing for Adobe Creative Cloud and transition to a rate-based model. Starting in August, students, faculty and staff will have to purchase their own individual licenses to the Adobe Creative Cloud through Yale’s IT software catalog. 

Students quickly took to social media platforms such as Instagram and the anonymous campus forum known as Fizz to denounce the changes.

“Your favorite student publications rely on the Adobe Creative Cloud to operate on a day-to-day basis,” The Yale Record, The Yale Herald and Rumpus posted in a joint statement on Instagram. “At a time when freedom of expression on college campuses is increasingly stifled, we are disappointed in Yale’s decision to make these essential softwares an out-of-pocket expense for students.”

In an email to the News, ITS said that the change was due to low utilization and would reduce costs for the University. The Adobe licenses cost Yale “hundreds of thousands of dollars each year,” ITS wrote. 

Under the new pricing structure, students can purchase a discounted annual license for $35.05 for the full Adobe Creative Cloud Suite or $5.15 for Adobe Express, a content creation tool often used for branding. Faculty and staff will pay $41.24 and $25.77, respectively. The standard educational rate for the entire suite exceeds $350 per year.

Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard and Princeton provide free access to Adobe Creative Cloud for all students. However, among schools that only provide discounted access to Adobe software, Yale’s discounted pricing is significantly less expensive.

The change comes as Yale tightens its budget in anticipation of a higher tax to its endowment earnings by taking measures such as a 90-day hiring pause. 

Students, faculty concerned about impact on coursework

The change has sparked backlash from students across disciplines, particularly among students involved in design-oriented majors that depend on Adobe software. 

Luke Louchheim ’27, an architecture major, said he was “shocked” when he saw the announcement, noting that free access to the Adobe suite “levels the playing field and ensures that everyone has creative freedom.”

Louchheim said that he has been in classes where projects “wouldn’t have been possible” without the tools in the Adobe suite, comparing Adobe to “Google Docs for an English major.”

Reese Weiden ’27, a film and media studies major and co-director of the Yale Student Film Festival, said the decision chips away at the seriousness with which the University treats the arts.

“It’s frustrating,” Weiden told the News. “It really undercuts the ability of a lot of students to do what they came here to do. Especially in film, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects are non-negotiable.”

Weiden said she plans to pay the $35 fee but noted that for students already paying out-of-pocket for other tools, such as screenwriting software or sound effect libraries, subscription fees add up quickly.

Yale faculty members are also concerned. In an email to the News, Professor John Peters, the director of undergraduate studies for Film & Media Studies, said the department had expressed their concerns to administrators “well before this policy came down.” Peters said his department would be “reinitiating talks” to get to an “equitable” solution for his students. 

Some peer universities choose to provide free access to a limited segment of students. Cornell, for example, requires instructors or departments to request free access for undergraduates each semester. After the University of Pennsylvania’s free access program ended in 2020, Adobe software is still free for graduate and PhD students of its Weitzman School of Design.

According to ITS, individual schools may offer alternative options for their students to obtain the Adobe suite. 

Student organizations worry about barriers to entry, cuts to free expression

The change has also drawn criticism from campus publications, particularly humor and culture magazines that rely on Adobe for graphic-heavy issues and social media.

“It’s not about the money,” said Oscar Heller ’26.5, co-Editor-in-Chief of The Yale Herald. “It’s the symbolic gesture. It feels like student journalism and creative work are being deprioritized.”

Heller said Yale’s decision felt like a “unilateral move” made without consultation from students or publications who rely on Adobe daily. He also voiced concern that the decision could set a precedent for future cuts to creative and journalistic resources — one where “essential resources will be slowly chipped away.”

“The scariest part about this is that it’s not as much about the financials as it is about what this could mean precedent-wise for things such as the arts,” Heller said.

Terence Harris ’27, the Record’s Print Editor-in-Chief, wrote to the News that the University’s move would “discourage” additional membership and add a financial barrier that would otherwise be “nonexistent.” 

Meanwhile, AJ Nakash ’26, Editor-in-Chief of Rumpus, added that the change could exacerbate an already existing shortage of student graphic designers. 

“I use Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign on a daily basis,” Mercuri Lam ’28, a graphic designer for student publications The New Journal and BRINK, said. “To even do anything on campus that is creative, you basically need it. It’s non-negotiable. It feels like anti-intellectualism. You’re stripping away essential resources that enable creative work and academic growth.”

Kris Aziabor ’26, co-president of Design at Yale, or DAY, said the Adobe Creative Cloud suite has been essential to both his coursework and creative development, and that Adobe tools were instrumental in launching his involvement with DAY.

Both Lam and Aziabor said that losing access to Adobe would not only jeopardize coursework and extracurricular involvements but would also hinder opportunities outside of Yale. Lam said that the ability to access and develop her Adobe skills using Yale’s free software enabled her “to obtain internships in the art sector this summer.”

“I was supposed to promote the fact that Yale gave students free Adobe,” said Lam, who previously promoted Adobe as the brand’s campus ambassador. “Now that it’s not free anymore, I don’t even know what the job means.”

Moreover, Aziabor told the News that he fears that if “people don’t have those tools,” it could “lead to struggles in attracting new members” to organizations like DAY, and that losing access hurts the organization’s mission to make design most effectively accessible on campus.

ITS acknowledged that there are currently “no approved free alternative software options that meet university security requirements,” and later told the News that it is not planning on offering any other alternatives to Adobe software. 

Some publications, like The New Journal, have already begun subsidizing licenses for their design teams, but Lam said the publication only has the budget to support a few students.

Yale Daily News staffers use several Adobe applications to produce print and online content. In recent years, the News has accessed Adobe software through the free accounts provided by ITS. 

The News is financially independent from Yale University, and plans to purchase Adobe Creative Cloud licenses for its staff, publisher Alyssa Chang ’27 said.

 

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/07/26/yale-ends-free-adobe-creative-cloud-access/