PPOL 3230

I loved this class. The material was extremely interesting, and Warburg presented it in a spectacularly easy to understand manner. The guest speakers were experts in their topic, so they never felt like a waste of time. This class by itself made me want to apply to Batten. Anyone interested in politics should take this class.

The material itself was interesting, but the way in which it was presented made the class frustrating. There seemed to be no real congruence. Also, the TAs graded somewhat inconsistently and without any helpful feedback.

This class has been so disappointing. Professor Warburg is unable to effectively facilitate class time. He talks about random things for the first 40 minutes of class, and I always wonder how so much time went by without any content being covered. Each class, he talks about what we're going to learn in that day's class, but then we don't actually learn it. However, there are a lot of guest speakers. Some are interesting and others aren't. The problem is Professor Warburg has designed the course in a way where there's no congruence between anything. It's just a random collection of policy topics, a new one covered each day. No analytical skills are covered in this class. I feel like I've learned a small amount about current events, essentially, but no concrete skills I could actually use to analyze or develop policy in the future.

There are 3 short papers (2-3 pages), one long, term paper (8-10 pages 1.5 spaced), a midterm and a final. We were asked to write a policy memo without any explanation of how to write a policy memo. Professor Warburg has never explained the rationale for the long paper. There are a fairly large number of readings, probably ~70 pages per class. Professor Warburg repeatedly says you need to do them. As long as you skim a couple before the exams though, there's probably no need to do them.

All in all, absolutely one of the most disappointing and frustrating classes I've taken at UVA. I would not recommend to anybody unless you are a Batten major required to take this course.

This class is very ambitious in what it aims to teach, but unfortunately fails to do so. Warburg himself is a pretty terrible lecturer, but a little over half the time lectures were given by guest speakers, or fellow classmates (each section presents on an assigned topic and details their policy solution towards the end of the year). At the beginning of the year there is a fair amount of reading, but as the year goes on there is less and less. By the last few weeks of the semester the reading will take an hour or less per class. There are 3 short writing assignments and one 8-10 page paper, a midterm, and a final. You can pretty much BS your way through the midterm/final but TAs can be very picky about the writing assignments. It definitely takes some time to figure out what they're looking for in these assignments. Overall, I would recommend this course to someone who wants to explore their interest in policy, but if you know you are already interested in it and want to learn analytical skills this probably isn't the class for you. Your TA will make a big difference, if Palmer is available I suggest taking it with her as she has taught me more of the analytical tools I was hoping to get out of Warburg.

Very interesting class, but kind of all over the place. Topics switch from week to week, and it's a little unorganized in the beginning but then starts to come together. Roughly one guest speaker each week which can be pretty interesting. Two midterms, one final exam, 3 two-page papers, and then 1 longer 8-10 page paper. Weekly discussions are also pretty interesting. Definitely recommend, not too difficult.

Somewhat interesting class and good professor. The visitors were all interesting and established in their fields. The issues we discussed were all really relevant as well. There were 3 policy briefs throughout the semester though which were really disconnected from the actual class and were graded really arbitrarily by my TA. If there weren't briefs, I'd recommend the class more, but they really brought down my enjoyment. Overall a pretty solid class though.

I took this class because I was interested in applying to the Batten School and it has single handedly made me NOT want to apply anymore. This class was incredibly disorganized and Warburg's lectures were full of generalities with no real application to policy. He constantly reminded us about how much we were learning about how to be well equipped policy makes, but he just didn't give us the tools to do so. The readings assigned outside of class were completely ignored in lecture, and only showed up on the midterm and final exam. The papers were given back with a grade and nearly no suggestions for improvements. Having a midterm, a final, three short papers, a 8-10 page paper, and a group project was just a little too much to be able to devote enough time to any of them individually. I wish we had covered a little less material in class so that we could have gone over each one more in depth. I was hoping that the "policy challenges" would act as more of a framework to structure a more analytical discussion about policy making, but this class ended up being just a scatterbrained current events course. This course sounds great on paper, but needs a few more years before it will be structured enough to where I would recommend taking it. I was frustrated almost every time I left class.

This class was extremely disappointing. Topics were disjointed and it felt like we talked more about what we were going to learn rather than actually learning it. While assignments were not difficult, I did not feel that they were valuable. The guest speakers were great, but not enough to make up for the lack of information, coherence, and overall value of this course.

I really enjoyed this class. It's really broad in scope and covers pretty much everything from separation of powers to specific policy areas (healthcare, criminal justice reform, urban policy). Lots of guest speakers as previously mentioned, all of whom were really interesting. People have said the class is scattered, but I think Warburg did a better job of pulling it together this semester than people made it sound. You have to approach is as kind of a crash course in different policy issues that helps you get better at thinking about/framing policy debates.
Two memos--my TA gave really good feedback on both that definitely helped me on the big paper. The first one kind of sneaks up on you and you don't have any practice beforehand, so would definitely recommend office hours if you start it early enough. Definitely do the readings in the CQ text--they're not too long and interesting, basically enable you to talk about a bunch of political areas like you know what's going on. I'd recommend this class to anyone somewhat interested in policy/politics, just because of the speakers, the broad range of topics covered, and the emphasis on effective writing/communication.

the best class ever!!