Andre Burgstaller

In consistence with the previous CULPA reviews, during the very few classes that I attended, Burgstaller has said many things that are just plainly offensive. He tends to ramble in an unpredictable manner and is very hard to follow. Every time I come to class out of guilt, I just question why I'm doing this to myself. With that said, attendance is totally unnecessary. Every class Burgstaller chooses "a slave" (yes he said that, minute 2 of the first day) to take pictures of notes on the board and will upload them, plus recordings of lectures, to Courseworks. Potentially, you can just sign up for the class, read the books at your own pace, only show up to submit your essays / take finals, and get this requirement over with (if you're a barnard econ major).

Professor Burgstaller is incredibly knowledgeable and very passionate about the material that he teaches. Although he may ramble and his class is often hard to follow, his passion and desire to teach makes up for it. I enjoyed him as a Professor

Andre Burgstaller has said SO MANY inappropriate, unprofessional, ignorant, and bigoted things over the course of this semester (in FYS Economic Life and Human Character). He has recommended that a student see a therapist, lectured the class on (antiquated, incorrect, and hurtful) "homosexual identities," and made inappropriate comments and assumptions about students' cultural, racial, and familial backgrounds. He spends an insane amount of class time lecturing about things that are often tangentially related to the content, so we rarely got through the content, including when students were presenting. There is an insane amount of reading that is often dense, but few essays with literally NO prompt - just "write something related!" He is a Marxist and brings back almost every single topic to Marxism and workers rights somehow, regardless of what the people in the class are centering as what they're interested in or see as important. I continually felt challenged in this class - but ideologically, not academically. He said so many things and argued so many points that conflicted with my worldview, and often responded to my disagreement in a way that felt minimizing and as though he was not listening or understanding what I said. But this class was incredibly amusing. We were never bored.

Alright, so you basically don’t have to do anything the entire semester, until the last week. Then all you have to do is write a final paper (10-20 pages) that’s worth 100% of your grade. If you go to all the recitations and either give a short recitation presentation or write a short review paper, then the final paper is worth 70% of the grade. If you go to some recitations and your presentation/review paper is mediocre, the final paper is worth 85%. I figured that the final paper is pretty much going to decide your grade, so I didn’t go to class or recitation, and then wrote the paper during the last week. I spent a good amount of time on it (I mean, it’s the only assignment you have to do) and did well on it. The end. I don’t know if Professor Burgstaller is an easy or hard grader, but you can’t complain about the workload. For those of you who do care about the material, Professor Burgstaller is a nice guy who sends lecture summaries and blackboard pictures every week. From the time I was in class, he was a little dry but very knowledgable. The class material is definitely interesting and a nice change of pace from the typical economics electives, but I was a second semester senior and didn’t really care about learning the material.

He may be one of the NICEST people I have ever met. But, that does not change the fact that this class (and his individual lectures) is SO disorganized. We use a textbook, but he refutes it every chance he gets. There is a practice midterm which is pretty much identical to the actual midterm, but the wording is RIDICULOUS (so confusing), as is the subsequent curve (around 30-40 points for me). Plus, he goes off on tangents. As a result, we barely covered a small portion of the plan intended on the syllabus. I do not feel even remotely confident in my knowledge of economics, and I know that's a common sentiment in the class. He is quite nice, though; I will give him that.

Where to begin? If there was one overarching theme it would be to stick to the material - I'm far from an avid policer of political correctness or what have you, but the degree and frequency of Prof. Burgstaller's inappropriate commentary distracted students from the course, made many uncomfortable, and ultimately reduced the quality of the course considerably. Some choice examples: 1. Publicly referred to a student's Catholic faith around the time of Easter, and then proceeded to tell the whole lecture hall about his favorite priest back in Geneva, who he liked because he was deaf, and therefore wouldn't hear the Professor when he would repent for his "impure thoughts about women". Again, the man teaches at a women's college. 2. Around the Lunar New Year, he remarked upon it, and when students waved in a particular way, he said (into the mic) "Oh, that's so Chinese of you." 3. Repeatedly commented on students' appearances. Usually positively, calling them "beautiful". Obviously shouldn't be a thing happening at all, positive or negative! Felt really weird even adding that detail in here, to be honest! 4. Commented on Barnard Public Safety's recent abusive treatment of a black student in the library next-door to where the lecture was taught, specifically saying people were being unsympathetic of the "uneducated, base" public safety officers, who "were just doing their job". 5.…

Some people are just not meant to be teachers. Burgstaller is one of them. He is a lovely person, very nice, very willing to help. However, this class was an absolute failure. There are not many classes at Columbia that I believe are an absolute disaster. Everyone has bad teachers, unfortunate experiences, but this class was the absolute worst. I hope no one has to experience what I did. The class started with over 100 people. Before the midterm, half of them have left. Of the remaining 60 students in an empty classroom that fits over 100 people, most had P/F the class by the midterm after realizing the coursework was absolutely absurd. Burgstaller could not teach, period. He tried to teach macro concepts without any math, yup any at all. I hate math, but sometimes it's necessary. The concepts were extremely difficult and convoluted without any numerical basis, and people literally just guessed around for the answer. His TA Luis was a disaster too. He graded the tests without any leniency. Since no answers had numerical basis, honestly it was up for arguing. He wrote extremely poorly organized handouts in which covered extensive material on one page of poorly written notes and graphs. Everyone I knew was always confused. There was not one person I spoke to who enjoyed the course. Further, most left confused and feeling like this class had ruined their semester. Most people I k…

This professor is one of the nicest people on Earth! He is brilliant and wonderfully enthusiastic about his subject. He really cares about his students, and wants to help them get as much as possible out of his class. He is also extremely receptive to student ideas, and encourages questions and office hour chats. Especially in his First-Year Seminar (which was the most awesome class I took in my life!) Professor Burgstaller has been incredibly friendly and down-to-earth, with his bright orange vest and his one-of-a-kind laugh. People who don't know him and are daunted by his accent or the countless mathematical symbols he scratches onto his black board: have no fear! First of all, if you'll just approach the man you'll find how good-natured he is, and how willing and capable he is with explaining the most complicated concepts in the clearest, most concise way. Second of all, for the Theoretical Foundations of Political Economy class, all the lecture tapes are in the library! He also spends hours and hours on preparing intricate lecture notes on Courseworks. He is truly an awesome professor, and a champion of student thinking.

Like a review below notes, Professor Burgstaller is a very nice person. He kindly answers every question during and after class. He is very responsive to emails also. He spent the earlier part of the semester in teaching the history of economics in general. The later part of the semester was spent for the classical model. He goes pretty much in detail in explaining the classical model. I often found it hard to follow the bunch of equations he write on board. But if you really want to learn it throughly, you can ask him questions or look at the supplementary materials he posts on courseworks. Things you need to for the class are one 5-6 page review of a thinker of your choice (or a class presentation) and a 10-15 page final paper (topic, your choice also). That means it really would not affect your grade even if you skip lectures and readings. Lectures and readings will be mostly valuable to you as an economics student, though. Listening to class presentation was a waste of time. Recommended for those who want to learn about the history of economics and those who want an elective with a relatively light workload.

Professor Burgstaller is an immensely intelligent economist and is well versed in the history of economic thought. This class is focused on heavy readings and carefully analyzing the macroeconomic applications from influential economic works. He is an incredibly kind man and tries to engage students in class. He explains concepts so well that I can recall exactly the examples he used. He records each lecture and posts it on courseworks, along with pictures of the board with his notes. Unfortunately many students do take advantage of this accessibility and skip on attending lecture. He makes Adam Smith as interesting as possible, although most of the readings are a dry read. His (and the TA's) grading is fair and does not let BS slip by. In all, he is a fantastic professor to have at Columbia and I encourage students to make an effort to engage in philosophical and economic thought with him.