COMM 3720

This was the most ridiculous class I have ever taken. I honestly felt like my IQ level was dropping every single second I spent in the class. On top of it all I learned absolutely NOTHING about corporate finance nor did he know anything about finance in general. He assumed we all knew R and Python and made us waste time on this stupid group projects which were never turned in nor graded. Additionally, the final project was essentially an ICE project and had nothing to do with the mini projects he assigned. Grading was ridiculous and he obviously just favored kids who kissed his a** during class and went along with his wizardry bullsh*t. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. Professor Erwin is a better teacher and that is saying something. Honestly is absurd that McIntire hired this man and that my tuition went to a full semester of his ridiculous nonsense.

This was the most ridiculous class that I've ever taken. Parham split us into groups and assumed that we knew how to code. His first few homework sets included R and Python (which is not a pre-requisite to a finance class) and would hurt our grades if we didn't know how to use them. He also had this strange theme of wizardry which was entertaining at first but when people's grades started coming back was completely absurd and annoying. Keep in mind that I got an A in this class and feel that I learned absolutely nothing. Avoid him as a professor at all costs.

DO NOT TAKE CORPORATE FINANCE WITH PROFESSOR PARHAM!
Easily one of the worst classes I have taken at UVA. Parham had no idea what he was doing the entire semester and was essentially making things up as he went along. He started the semester by breaking up the class into groups of 7 people. This was way too big of groups. It was impossible to coordinate so many people. He then promised us we would get 10 small group projects that would congregate at the end of the semester to a big group project. Not only did we only get 4 small projects during the semester, the final project was completely different and had nothing to do with the 4 we had already completed. We essentially wasted our time.

Along with this, he had us take in class pop quizzes every day that were self graded. These were extremely frustrating since most of them were too difficult for the time constraint he gave us. Also, since they were self-graded, there was no way to know if your other classmates were being honest about the grades they were receiving, and thus reporting much higher grades than they actually achieved.
The worst part of the semester was the 8 hour continuous take home midterm. According to Parham, the rules of the exam were that we had 8 hours with minimal breaks (basically bathroom and lunch) to take a 40 question test on our own, but open notes. He told us it was impossible to complete all 40 questions in 8 hours.

Not only is this a ridiculous way to make students take a midterm, there were also no consequences whatsoever for people who cheated. A large amount of students took more than 8 hours on the exam and completed all 40 questions. Along with this, he told us in class that some students obviously cheated off of one another, but since he didn't really understand honor code, he wasn't going to get them in trouble.

Finally, I learned NOTHING about corporate finance from this class. All we learned was a little bit of economics, a little bit of statistics, a little bit of accounting, and a little bit about BitCoin. I wasted so much time sitting in his class for 75 minutes twice a week. The only things I know about finance is what I learned in ICE.

Considering how horrible his class was I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see Professor Parham at UVA next semester/year, but if he somehow still has a job here, under no circumstance should you take his class. If all the other corporate finance classes fill up, please just take corporate finance next semester.

It is an embarrassment to the McIntire School of Commerce to have this man as one of its staff members and I sincerely hope they rectify this soon.