I would rather have my fingernails pulled out than take another class with this man. Don't get me wrong the class is easy, but it is tedious and in general this man is an uninspired professor. He loves to just pile on a bunch of useless busy work that makes you want to stick pencils into your eyes. But hey, like I said its a pretty easy A, as long as you don't mind the soul sucking BS.

This professor is already very poorly reviewed that there's really not much more to say. I'd only like to add that students should believe what's been said about his teaching style. It is all over the place. There's an enormous amount of reading. Group projects are worth huge chunks of your grade and force you to cooperate with people who may not pull their own weight. The exams are extremely difficult, but at least they are curved. Overall I would not recommend this class even if the title of it sounds interesting. It's not really about authoritarian politics. Rather it focuses on scholarly debates between several academics about the abstract concepts of democracy and dictatorship. A tiny fraction of the class is actually about looking at actual regimes in the real word. Most of it pertains to several authors and their minute differences in their definitions of specific terms. There is also statistics involved so if you don't like math I would also not recommend this class.

If white bread was a dude but also just no. Go for it if you hate yourself.

This class initially appeared to be decent, however, as time went on, the course became more and more confusing and I felt that the materials that we learned in his lectures were very rushed which did not give us enough time to fully understand. I also expected to learn a mixture of politics and economics and how they are shaped together, I felt as if the majority was economics and just a tip of politics. Although I believe that the professor himself is not a bad person and reasonable to talk with, he was not good/ a little too rushed when it comes to teaching. The only positive I could think of was that the workload was manageable, there were 19 quizzes, 4 problem sets and 3 papers requiring 2~3 pages. Grading will vary with some provided with feedback and reasons why points were deducted, however, there were also some where we are only told where we got our points deducted but without giving proper reason. Overall, my time in this class was not pleasant, and would only recommend this class if there are no alternatives or is a requirement for your major.

It's been two quarters since I've taken this class so it's a little fuzzy but I can remember most of the important details. I think I did get the top grade in the class but I'll be as objective as possible.

Professor Roberts is a FAST talker. If you are someone who feels intimidated by fast talkers this class is definitely not for you. If you know a lot of the stuff beforehand, it will definitely help you understand what he's saying.

Midterm: (Only took a midterm cuz CORONA)

TBH a lot of the concepts are rehashes of ECON 1. If you've never taken ECON 1 or you don't have a firm grasp of ECON concepts you are in for a rollercoaster of confusion. On the midterm people got some disastrous grades because they weren't 100% sure about some basic concepts. The midterm was curved up, though, because people got some awful grades. There is also extra credit on the midterm. (I think I got a 100, and then my grade was boosted to 111 from extra credit+the curve.) I just reviewed quiz problems + past midterm exams that the professor uploads.

Read the book. Go. To. Office. Hours.
I don't think anyone can say they deserved a 111 but I did come close because I intuitively knew that I would have to go to the Prof's office hours as much as I could for research exercises and problem sets because they are not well-explained SO GO.

Good luck. I felt dumb a lot of the time because I couldn't understand what the Prof was saying most of the time even when he was talking directly at me in office hours. Good guy though. He tries to be helpful. He tries.

I am a stats major so I knew everything before the course. Had I not been a stats major, I would not have been able to follow the course because the Professor has no idea what he is talking about. Plus, he doesn't understand some of the concepts he teach (standard error vs standard deviation and anova and such) so it is painstaking watching him crash and burn. If I met him outside of class, I wouldn't have noticed him.

Worst class and professor I have ever taken. DO NOT TAKE TYSON ROBERTS. He does not care about his students or the quality of education he is giving them. He miscalculated my attendance grade which dropped my overall grade by 10% at the end of the quarter. When I reached out to fix it, he never responded to me and never fixed my grade. Started the final exam by prefacing he would have to curve the test because he had written it poorly. The class following the midterm began with "what happened guys" because the average grade was so low as a direct result of poor teaching and exam writing. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS OR PROFESSOR.

While the professor had an attitude of genuine caring and encouragement of student learning, the course structure relied heavily on self-directed learning, utilizing an online textbook and homework assignments as the primary means of instruction. While the content itself was comprehensive, there was a noticeable lack of organization and clarity in how it was presented in lectures. Students often found themselves navigating the material independently, with limited guidance from the professor. However, the course was overall manageable, and the content was accessible and relevant to the subject matter. The assessment and coursework were also self-directed but allowed for a large amount of flexibility and was considerate of students. Overall, doable and a very reasonable option to satisfy the quant requirement - just expect it to be the type of class where you do most of your learning by yourself and only go to class/discussion if you need help or participation credit.

Class had a good weekly layout and I could easily navigate the materials through canvas. Class wasn't difficult, just time consuming, as long as you did readings and wrote good notes during the class lecture, you would be able to easily follow along with the topics and complete the assignments/quizzes. Professor also is very forgiving with the grading, he would drop the lowest grades in each category, quizzes, assignments, and problem sets. Midterms and final were multiple choice and were almost identical in terms of questions to the previous weekly quizzes/problem sets if you did them.

I tried to drop this class in the first week but I couldn't get off the waitlist anywhere else so unfortunately I had to take this class for the entire quarter.

Roberts absolutely sucks as a lecturer. He just kind of reads off of the slides, and when he does go on tangents they offer nothing of value to the class. I'm not even sure he actually knows the material. He was also supposed to be broadcasting the lectures on Zoom but he sometimes forgot and then still marked down people for not "participating" in lecture (when many couldn't participate because he didn't even start the Zoom).

For the midterm, he gave us a list of things to study, but then it felt like half of the things on the test weren't on the study guide. For the final, he didn't even bother and just said "study the entire course", which is completely useless.

The only positive thing I can say about this class is that the weekly workload, for the most part, isn't too bad. The readings are long but the actual weekly assignments are pretty brief.

The weekly assignments are short little research projects that only take around 30 minutes to complete every week. This builds up to a final research paper that was one of the most frustrating assignments I've ever had to take at UCLA. I came up to him multiple times to workshop my essay and get his input on things. He often offer suggestions that were either A) not actually mentioned in the course readings, or B) were completely counterfactual to the evidence presented in the course material. Every time I went to his office hours I ended up leaving more confused than when I originally went in.

If you can, do whatever you can to stay away from this class. I promise it's not worth your time.