Hartman says he wants to help students but will deflect any question you come to him with. He encourages students who could do well to drop his course and doesn't seem to care about the well-being of his students. The lectures aren't worth it to attend- you'll get the same information online through the pre-recorded ones. Good luck!

Tests are the only thing that really matters at 45% of your grade. Lecture is worthless you need to do your own research on the topics and DO THE OLD EXAMS!!! He provides many of them and if you do them all you learn how to do the exams! Dont ever miss hw or quiz at the end it gets down to having 100% in everything then C average on test to get B

He is unworthy of being a professor. He should educate himself first. Every time you ask him a question, he just throws something else at you. Cold-blooded and doesn't care about students.

Firstly, the professor is not good at teaching. He does not explain each concept fully with relevant clearances and examples. TAs are nice. The tests are completed unrelated to past exams so you have to study the materials on your own. As a person who enjoys learning economics, I can say the design of this course completely ruined my experience.

He doesnt go over problems or how to do them. The lectures are not closely related to the test questions.

10A is a disrespectful weeder class. The exams are artificially difficult. The actually material is easy to grasp and to apply but when lecturer John tests you on things that are no covered it makes it almost impossible to get a good grade in the class. The average grade is below a C. So if you get an average grade you will fail the class.

Honestly the worst instructor I've had in my entire life. Restates the book in lecture but somehow makes the book seem even more unclear. Does not teach how to do any of the problems that will appear on the midterms. If TA Sarah was not in charge of the problem sets I would have failed the class along with many more students who I'm sure agree. Sad

All in all this class is pretty easy to do good in. The whole class revolves around different applications of Cobb Douglas, quasi-linear, perfect substitute, and perfect complement utility functions. The teacher does not teach the material enough, but it's to be expected, this is the econ gatekeeper class, youtube is your best friend here.

Hartman, 10A, the gatekeeper of ECON major. This is a weeder class, what are you expecting. Prof Hartman is very accessible and you can find him easily in his office hours, but the lecture is just really boring (both recorded and live). I also did not find the live lecture useful. Syllabus is quite generous (lowest drop). If you try you can make it

It's the well-known gatekeeper 10A so be prepared. It is a hard class but with Prof Hartman's grading system, as long as you are not a transfer, it should not be too hard to be admitted into the major. Pay attention to all lectures and go to TA sections (tbh sections are very helpful) and you will be able to get enough grade for the major.

DON'T TAKE THIS PROFESSOR! No seriously, you rather skip a quarter and take it with someone else. Lectures are so useless. Gives an example but doesn't fully go over them. He will say "this is up for the students to calculate and figure out" then honestly what is the point of him? Exams were not similar to past exam so studying those didn't help.

Terrible professor. In my four years at UCSB, he is by far the worst professor I have ever taken. You learn absolutely nothing from his lectures. The tests and lectures feel like completely different material. You need to teach yourself or learn from Sarah, the best TA there is.

If the TA Sarah becomes the instructor of 10A, the average score will at least go up by 10%.

Prof basically reads off the slides and doesn't elaborate. But the TAs are amazing. Don't buy the textbook, there's a pdf online and it's not helpful anyways.

had not had one bad experience with a single professor until i took his class, he does not make any effort to help students or explain any material and a week before vaccines were available to the public he sent out an email warning students that sickness from the vaccine was not an excuse for an extention/to do poorly

Professor Hartman is not helpful at all. I took Econ 10A with him and I am taking Econ 134A. You need to do all of his previous tests to pass these classes. Don't rely on his lectures because they are useless. You basically need to teach yourself.

You will have to teach yourself the test material, because you certainly will not learn it from him.

Hartman is pretty much the definition of mediocre. He gives you the very basics of the topics in his lectures (does not elaborate) and it's up to you to go read the book and watch the TA's do problem sets in order to really understand.

As a class, 10A isn't too bad (as long as you aren't a transfer). If you do a ton of practice tests (and you understand what you're doing) you should be fine. As for Hartman, he's super unenthusiastic in lectures and a lot of the things he says are vague/ unnecessary. I found myself relying much more on the TAs than I did Hartman for help.

I cant even get myself to watch his lectures, he speaks so monotone and just reads off the slides not explaining anything in depth! Its super frustrating and makes me not want to learn the material . Ive gone to his office hours for questions on old exams and he just rambles on about test taking strategies and doesn't answer the actual question

The worst professor I have ever had. I hope the econ department removes this man because he has no clue how to teach a class. He teaches you nothing, you need to teach yourself virtually everything in this class.

Harsh man who cared little about fairness and his students. The course was even worse than before: raise curve for A from 87% (before pandemic) to 93%; set sequential navigation in tests (must finish one question before proceeding to next one); increased toughness of tests, making doing past papers futile. BTW he's not even a professor yet.

Not great at explaining and just breezes through so the class is a self study course basically

You're going to have to teach yourself all the material, however they did change the class set up for COVID and it was a bit easier to obtain a B however the test's are very hard. They do give you old midterms to use to study, but do not rely on the teachers to actually teach you the material. Good luck.