Jeffrey Sachs

Unfortunately, Sachs is more like a guest speaker who comes in once a week, and does not seem to even be aware of what is happening the rest of the time. He lectures on topics that are nowhere near his field of expertise (such as biodiversity), simply repeating, but much more inaccurately, what experts in the field are teaching in Science for Sustainable Development. Sachs is completely ineffective as an undergraduate professor, allowing the TAs to suffer with economic theory which they find nearly impossible to teach in the time available. The problem sets had errors that confused the TAs and which made some questions impossible to resolve. Worst of all, the midterm was simply canceled because Sachs could not care to modify his two-year-old exam, and students complained that others had 'cheated' off last year's midterm. In summary, this class was certainly the worst I have taken so far, as it is terribly structured, extremely stressful, and in all ways disappointing, as everyone looked forward to studying with Jeffrey Sachs.

I didn't like Challenges of Sus Dev. Jeffrey Sachs only lectures on Mondays. Wednesday classes are taught by a TA that will literally put you to sleep (no seriously, it's early in the morning and people fall asleep). Sachs' lectures are basically him droning on about his personal opinions. We basically talk about the same stuff we always do in sustainable development, and it's really all very repetitive. The midterm was a total fiasco. Average was 62!! Finally for some reason it got cancelled and have to write a paper instead. I highly encourage doing the problem sets in group, because they are ridiculous and you will tear your hair out if you are trying to do it on your own and you're not an Econ major.

4 Problem sets (40%); Midterm (actually 2, because one got canceled) (25%); Final (35%).

This course is not what they tell you it is. On Mondays Prof. Sachs, will probably arrive late and start giving his lecture from a powerpoint. Then on Wednesdays, the main TA, will read another presentation, on a completely different topic and mostly Econ material. It's like taking two courses for 3 credits. They say there are no prerequisites, but that is a lie, if you have no Econ background there is no way you can do the problem sets by yourself. All the problem sets are completely Econ based, making you do excel spreadsheets and interpret graphs.

Great professor. Clearly brilliant, and a pretty engaging lecturer. I have mixed feelings about the class though. I thought that it would've been much more useful to have Econ as a prerequisite, because we wasted a lot of time going over the theory behind his ideas instead of his ideas themselves. Moreover, for someone who hasn't or isn't concurrently taking Econ, McCord and Sachs aren't as practiced explaining the basics, making graphs seem a lot more complicated than they would be if you got the same information in Principles. It's a great class and Common Wealth and Sachs are great tools, and Sustainable Development is an increasingly interesting subject, so take the class, just know that it's not as perfect as a class with Professor Sachs could be.

Well, I wouldn't dissuade anyone who's interested from taking this class, but I do have mixed feelings. This is, of course, a survey course, covering economic development as well as environmental issues, and considering the huge range of material available, I think the course does a decent job. Be prepared to be introduced to some really interesting economic models (very straightforward) but Sachs will never acknowledge the discrepancies between the models and the real world. About half the lectures are indeed given by Jeffrey (who's incredibly performative and persuasive) and the other half are given by his mini-me, Gordon McCord. Gordon should receive credit as a professor for this class, but of course in Sach's shadow he never does. Gordon tried admirably to engage students by asking questions, but unfortunately his serious demeanor meant he only ever shot students down. Don't worry, this isn't a math-intensive class, but I WOULD recommend some economic background. I took this class concurrently with Principles of Economics, without which I think I would have struggled a bit.

Professor Sachs gives good lectures, but this is still the worst class I've ever taken at Columbia. His lectures don't make up for the fact that his TAs are awful (mine never even came to class), the readings are irrelevant (he goves over all the important things in there anyway), the problem sets are poorly worded (so the TAs send out four follow-up emails trying to clarify them), and the exams and mind-numbing (the miterm literally required us to memorize and recite a list of numbers). The mean grade on the midterm was a 65%, and they still said they wouldn't curve them (though I suspect at the end, they did). Unless you want to spend four months learning about fish and malaria, skip this class. Instead, just go to one of the dozen guest lectures Sachs gives on campus -- they boil this entire class down to 1.5 hours, which is really all the time it deserves anyway.

ON THE PROFESSOR: Prof. Sachs is an academic celebrity. He is both eloquent and profound in his talks. ON THE LECTURES: The range of topics is very wide--including issues like poverty in Africa, fisheries management, and other things of that nature. A few of the lectures include a lot of economics and math. ON THE OTHER PEOPLE: The class has what I assume are ~140 students. I believe there is a wide range of types of students here--both age-wise and experience-wise. ON THE MIDTERM: I took the midterm and thought it was pretty good--not perfect at all, but good. Unfortunately, I got something in the low 60s and the average was a whopping 62.7 out of 100. OTHER -The powerpoints are posted online. -Professor Sachs did not always teach the class. One time I believe he missed a class because he was in Sudan. But overall his attendance is very very good. -There is a section with a TA

This class was hands-down one of the most fascinating I have taken at Columbia. Professor Sachs is one of the most organized, engaging (at 8:45 a.m. too), passionate professors I have had. He uses slides for every lecture that truly supplement and illustrate the material he is discussing. He covers every conceivable topic in sustainable development, and it is obvious that he genuinely wants students to understand and appreciate the extent of the problems of poverty. He has a great lecture style, and even in a class of 200 + students at 9 a.m., was willing to ask questions to the class and joke with us instead of simply lecturing AT us. This class was so informative, and the T.A.s did a great job of keeping everyone up to pace with some of the trickier concepts. There really isn't anything I can think of that I found problematic with the course. You end the semester with a whole set of tools to conquer so many of the problems of developing countries.

Dr. Jeffrey Sachs was a pretty good professor. He wrote the Book on ending poverty, and the charm of his 8:30AM class was well-compensated for by his smooth slides and practiced presentations, taken directly from his myriad speeches around the world on the topic. And the slides were quite repetitive. (Though the Professor never once managed to finish all the slides he prepared for each class)The Professor took a whole semester to cover what could have been covered in three or four weeks. Nevertheless, it was a very enjoyable experience, and a solid first run-through - he called our class his "maiden voyage" - I learned a lot. If anything, this class helped me figure out what other classes to take (and not take) if I want to pursue humanitarian work in development. The class sprawled all over the field of SusDev, lightly touching on multiple disciplines: demonstrating the Solow Model of Macroeconomics, the Hadley Cells of Climate Systems, the Millenium Development Goals of the UN, a dozen two-to-three-letter codes for all the Earth's climate zones, spreadsheets, country case studies, a couple of slides for each environmental hazard, some essays to write at home and on the final, a few words on governance and corruption (or rather geography), a few words on economic incentives, and before you knew it the class was over. I definitely came out of the class feeling like I didn't le…