Roland Rust

This professor has taught: BMGT457, BMGT808C, BMGT858L, BUSO740, HNUH248C

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Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting an A Anonymous 12/29/2025	Professor Rust is highly distinguished in the world of academia and recognized for his brilliance by several publications, as he will tell you himself in class and via Canvas announcements. As far as I can tell, this course is his personal vanity project in which students are required to purchase and discuss his own book, The Feeling Economy. The thesis of this book, according to ChatGPT, is as follows: "As AI replaces routine cognitive work, economic value will increasingly come from uniquely human emotional, creative, and interpersonal skills rather than traditional technical tasks." I think an AI summary is apt to describe his book, because it reads like it was written by AI anyway. It's so repetitive and dry that you will gain nothing more from actually reading it than from having ChatGPT summarize it. This isn't to say his ideas are wrong--many are probably right, to some degree, and he makes fair arguments even for the ones I disagree with. Other claims, like the section considering outcomes of the Singularity, are entirely speculation, divorced from scientific reasoning. For something that's ostensibly a textbook, the whole thing is bizarrely unscientific. But even if you disagree with everything he says, surely there are interesting discussions to be had on the topic of the future of AI. Unfortunately, those discussions are not to be had in this class. Every lecture involves one group delivering a 20-30 minute presentation on one chapter of the book, during which the rest of the class must sit and listen as the book's ideas are parroted back to them. This led to some truly cringeworthy moments, when groups would quote and praise the professor's book right in front of him ("as The Feeling Economy wisely states..."). Sometimes there are "debates", which in this class just means two presentations back-to-back followed by a vote. You'd think, with a professor who believes interpersonal skills are the future of the economy, there would be more actual engagement and discussion between students. But no, instead it's a class where students tune everything out and do work for other classes. No wonder so many people skipped--something that incensed Professor Rust, who added an Attendance/Class Participation grade pretty late in the semester. Oh yeah, there are also these ridiculous quizzes based on the readings. Every class, he determines whether there will be a quiz via, get this, a random number generator. Every quiz consists of 3 multiple choice questions about superficial details in the readings. Your grade should be fine if you do the readings. If you're not put off by anything I just said--the ego of the professor, the arbitrary grading system, the dullness of the lectures--go ahead and take this class, it's an easy A. But those things bothered me enough to write this novel-length review. To future students taking this course: treat the class as a joke. Add weird details and visuals to your slides, ask crazy hypothetical questions of the group that's presenting, make extreme arguments just to stir the pot. That's the only way to make this course entertaining.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/23/2025	Please Please Please avoid him; do not take the AI cluster if you're in UH, because you will have to take this course and and he is awful. The course doesn't have a significant amount of work: only like three written assignments, two presentations/debates, and the rest are just readings. But he does give 10 POP QUIZZES at the beginning of the class. If you were late to class by even a few minutes, then sorry, you just missed a quiz that will drop your final grade by 3%. But once he realized students were leaving his class (after realizing there wasn't a quiz), he started giving them in the middle of class too. (I even believe he lost one of my quizzes and caused me to get a 0 on it.) All of the quizzes are based on readings for that day, which are sometimes just short chapters from his book, or like 8 articles he assigns us to read, and because of this you need to read very carefully because the questions he gives get specific or kind of particular at times (to the extent of the difference between the cause of something and the thing itself being different, which you will confuse if you don't read closely). For those aforementioned written assignments, his instructions are generally quite vague, and he will take off points if you fall victim to HIS OWN AMBIGUITY or lack of guidance. Not to mention, he often grades with his emotions first; like how he gives an extra point to the group who wins the debates (based on polling the class), but will basically just choose the team he wanted to win from the get-go, regardless of the class's vote. Not to mention, for basically the entire semester (and I am guessing due to incompetence), the grades were hidden so we could never dispute any discrepancies, or even know where you stand in the course, for that matter. Roland Rust teaching this course is 100% a ploy for him to sell his book and profit off the poor students who take this class hoping to learn about AI. Rust just seems like an evil business professor. Somehow, he was not the worst professor I had this semester (see Kruskal...), but he was certainly not good. My advice, if you're stuck taking this class, is to do all the readings and take notes on them too, then ask an AI to quiz you with MCQ questions on those readings to prepare you for Rust's quizzes. For the presentations, make sure you add lots of information outside of the class readings and do not read off of the slides or from a script (at least not directly). For the written assignments, go above and beyond as necessary because he will find a way to reduce points if you cut a corner (a corner he will retroactively attribute to the assignment, though you had no idea it would've been there.) Overall, good luck.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2025	As many people have mentioned, this class is a poorly designed experience where you listen to Rust ramble about his thesis, book, theories, and all of his awesome academic work. It is not difficult in the slightest, and has extremely low workloads. However, the class organization is rough - every single point on every assignment is a percentage of your final class grade, seemingly without curve. There are 10 daily pop quizzes, each 3 questions - I missed one due to an all nighter and passing out before the class, that immediately set my max to a 97%. If you walk in late to a class, you may miss the questions and have to guess at random (they're all multiple choice). At a certain point in the course, he got fed up with students leaving his class each day and had everyone present sign attendance - nothing seemed to come of this, but maybe he penalized the people not present? He also started moving quizzes to the middle of the class for similar purposes. The strange organization of assignments leads to any slight mistakes penalizing you harshly - at the time of writing I'm waiting on my final presentation grade, which will determine if I get an A or A-. It sucks that this course is the required UH course for the AI cluster, as the other courses in the cluster are considerably more engaging and interesting from what I've seen. Do not buy his textbook, Libgen is your friend.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting an A- Anonymous 10/28/2025	Took this course in Fall of 2024, reviewing him because I continue to hear bad experiences with the man and am reminded of my own. This class was honestly quite terrible. The name of the course is incredibly misleading, as you learn nothing about the societal impacts of AI. One of the previous reviews states this perfectly and says its just marketing for his book and absolutely bizarre thesis about the "era of empathy" and how all "intellectual" jobs will cease to exist. His pop quizzes were absolutely diabolical, as he would give you a long reading unrelated to the course material and would cherry-pick some random piece of information (like the name of some guy when theres like 4 other guys mentioned by name, or a specific date) from it to quiz you on. Also if you're 5 minutes late on a pop quiz day, tough luck - its already over and you have a 0. That's the only reason I got my GPA lowered by this dreadful class. The debates were probably the worst part of his course, as he would be incredibly biased towards one side straight out of the gate. Incredibly subjective grading as well - there was an instance where he took points off for reading off the slides, but ALSO took points off when I prepared a script to avoid reading off the slides. A sensible professor would not assign a pre-determined winner for a debate in their mind. A sensible professor would not cherry-pick the most irrelevant information for their pop quiz. A sensible professor would not publish a book that contains meaningless graphs and typos within it. But Rotten Rust is not sensible.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/25/2025	I've never gotten a B ever!!! smh! An A is possible but I just got unlucky honestly. There are 10 pop quizzes on longggggggg readings. I got 1/3 a couple times but you start being able to predict what kind of specific questions he'll put on them. There are also 2 presentations/debates and 2 small little group assignments that he grades SO subjectively on it's crazy. He'll take random points off that he won't take off for other groups. He'll also won't admit that he's wrong and seems to take offense to any sort of feedback. Such a business professor guy. I found his textbook online and it felt very opinionated. Some parts were honestly stupid. Idk what his sources are. Previous reviews said he talked about his life a lot but I wish that's what it was over whatever happened this semester. Aside from that though, the class is really easy. You just sit there listening to some group present so you can do literally whatever during class. He barely taught anything himself. The content from our classmates' presentations and the readings he gave us were pretty interesting though, so the class was good in that way. I was just trying to do the AI honors cluster man.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting a C Anonymous 05/20/2025	This guy is a very subjective and interesting guy. Most of this class is just reading the book that HE WROTE and forces you to buy, doing presentations and/or listening to other groups' presentations, and hearing him talk about his own credentials and why he's so qualified to speak on the subject. He takes points off of presentations for very arbitrary stuff such as not liking a picture or data point. He interjects consistently and repeatedly during your presentation to interject some random point and ends up messing up your whole flow and he has very little grace for assignments. I have never left a negative review on any professor 've had but this guy takes the cake for worst professor. If you're thinking about taking him. Don't.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/11/2025	He gives out a quiz on assigned readings around every three classes and sometimes they are really hard so on the days you have them be sure to actually read the assigned ones carefully because quizzes are a large part of the grade. You are also split into groups and you have two big presentations, both weighted a lot and he critiques harshly so they should be perfect or he will take off a point for anything. Besides the quizzes and presentations, the class is easy and you don't really do much except sit there and listen to people present. We dont have a final or any final project which is nice, just don't really expect this class to be a GPA booster because it isn't going to be for me and I don't know many people get a 94 or higher in the class.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting an A Anonymous 04/22/2025	This class is a marketing scheme for Rust's book. FYI, don't buy the book, you can find it for free online. Firstly, the class is not really on "societal impacts" of AI, rather its on Rust's questionable thesis that AI will create an era of empathy where any jobs requiring logic (finance, engineering, etc) will cease to exist and any "empathetic" jobs (marketing... might be some bias there) will flourish and get paid way more. The entire class, including all references and figures are of Rust's own creation or created by various co-authors (including his wife). Every class has a 1/3rd chance of a pop quiz, and the quizzes are usually 1-3 questions on super specific topics from the book or assigned articles. For example, the article might be about OpenAI's recent drama, but he would ask for the full name of a specific co-founder or an important exact date, either of which being mentioned as an aside in the reading. It's very obvious Rust has a major ego problem and constantly feels the need to flex his academic work, all of which is marketing-specific and gives him 0 credibility to talk about AI. He will also throw in random interdisciplinary work to seem smart. For example, he "proved" one of his points using differential equations, but he literally just assigned erroneous values to everything to make the resulting solution prove his point. Whenever he uses math/figures, it makes Trump's tariff equation look like a work of genius. If you're a STEM student (or have ever taken STAT400), you'll likely cringe throughout his lectures, and if you're anyone else, you'll likely fall asleep.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/17/2024	In this class, you will be randomly assigned a group, and each class one or two groups will take turns presenting during class. Throughout the semester, you'll have to present one informative presentation abt an assigned topic and present an argumentative presentation on an assigned view. The rubric for these presentations was practically nonexistent. It was 3 bullet points (Points made, Visuals, and Creativity) each bullet was 5pts for a total of 15pts. Remember: every point matters in this class. His grading style was very subjective as he takes off points easily for something as stupid as creativity if he doesn't like something and he doesn't even clearly state what he wants out of the presentation in the "rubric". There are also articles assigned that you have to read before each class. You'll be quizzed on the readings 1/3rd of the time with bs pop quizzes. They're out of 3 pts and either 3 questions or 1 question all or nothing. The pop quiz is either at the beginning or end of class abt the reading or the lecture he gave. Some of the questions were so oddly specific that even if you read the article, it's highly unlikely you would remember the name of a cofounder of some company or who the person that was mentioned ONCE in the entire article was. Overall, I wish I never took this class my first semester of college because my gpa is already lowered due to a meaningless gen ed class with a bad professor. If you do end up taking this class, don't bother buying his textbook. It's a free PDF download on lib gen. Cut your losses at least that much.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting an A Ese_Asa 12/12/2024	TL;DR: Good class with bad professor. This class was one of the most relevant classes I took this semester and taught me a lot about AI. HOWEVER. Rust is an interesting professor, to say the least. First and foremost, the required textbook for this class is a book he co-wrote with his wife, and you have to read it in order to pass his pop quizzes (which are worth 30% of your grade). You'll give two presentations in this class (which are worth 15% of your grade each) and the rubric isn't comprehensive at all. He'll grade said presentations based on his opinions on the subject you're presenting on, so if you mention something he disagrees on, he'll sometimes take away points. He can be rude and inconsiderate, and you can tell he's kind of a snob. So, if you want to learn about AI but potentially suffer, take this class. I don't regret it, but it caused a lot of suffering.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Expecting an A Anonymous 12/06/2024	The course is very easy in terms of content. The content is generic and as long as you read all of the readings he provides, an A is definitely possible. However, if you miss anything he will not be lenient at all. Some of the quizzes are also very specific on the readings. For example, the name of someone mentioned once in the reading is fair game. The class overall is awfully boring but can become a study period pretty easily.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Anonymous 11/25/2024	Nice guy and the class is pretty easy. Gives pop quizzes every couple classes so you are forced to go to class. Doesn't give retakes if you missed the quiz. Lectures are boring, talks about his work and what he has done in his life. I would do other homework during his class. Two group presentations that are about 20 min long, doesn't give much guidance on how to do them. Very lenient with grading though, most groups got 13/14 out of 15 for presentations, even though he would correct groups on their data multiple times during the presentation. Take him if you want an easy A.
Roland Rust HNUH248C Anonymous 09/19/2024	Content is fine but pretty boring, talks about himself and his own work a lot, give these ridiculous pop quizzes and doesn’t offer any retakes.
Roland Rust Expecting a B Anonymous 05/17/2024	The only reason I got a B was because of the grade curve I actually had a 76 but the curve is one letter grade above the percentage. I NEVER GET Cs!!! He is an extremely hard grader and to be honest a prick. All of the content he teaches is based on his own Scholarly readings that he and his wife write. If you have a different interpretation of the readings you are wrong. His instructions for assignments aren't very clear and he will literally interrupt student presentations before they get through all of the content to complain about what he thinks they did wrong. If there is another instructor to teach this class 10000% choose the other instructor over him. He's extremely intimidating and knows he is. His lectures are also extremely boring. DO NOT TAKE HIM!!!!! I actually want to do market strategy for my career and he made the class that I was extremely excited about, miserable.
Roland Rust BMGT457 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/09/2024	Almost every class there was an assigned reading from articles that the professor wrote. They were extremely long, but as long as you understand the abstract you should be good. About 8 pop quizzes either based on the reading or class discussion, and those were always easy. 2 presentations but absolutely no structure for what he wanted and such a vague rubric. It was definitely interesting to see his perspective on topics since he did participate in a lot of research, but overall he was pretty close minded. Overall not terrible.
Roland Rust BMGT457 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/09/2023	There are only two reviews for this professor and they're both fairly outdated, so here I am. Straight up, Roland Rust is not the WORST professor ever. He is there to help and answer questions, and he knows what he's talking about. However, as mentioned below, he is quite ego-centric. Majority of the lecture slides and articles he requires us to read are 100% his own writings and research. He also is not afraid to show off his awards as a distinguished professor and not to mention... his wife too. But look, it's whatever, because the awards he got are big deals and he's allowed to tell us or put in his syllabus. The case studies aren't that bad as long as you have a good team, otherwise you'll be pulling most of the weight. The Markstrat simulation is actually interesting if you know what you're doing, and I can understand why he has us do it since it is a Marketing Capstone course after all. The final exams however, a bit unnecessary in my opinion. There are two - one is the STP "required" exam thats worth 4 points. The other is the overall course exam worth 40% of your grade. It is based on ALLLLL the content slides and readings, and let me tell you, the readings are long. Overall, he's not the worst professor, he's not the best. He sits right in the middle for me. I've had worst and have had better. If he's the last choice on Testudo you'll be fine. Just try to go to lecture, submit the assignments, pass the exam and you'll be fine.
Roland Rust BMGT457 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/23/2012	I'm not quite sure why he is forced to teach undergrad marketing capstone. It is evident from the first day that he is a grad school professor interested in marketing research. A course better suited for him to teach undergrads may be 452. The b-school having Rust teach 457 is basically a way to boost his ego. All of his lectures are basically about research he has done for the university. He is clearly a very smart and highly regarded researcher but the entire class is basically about him. The course is structured as 1 day lecture, 1 day group presentations so work is pretty minimal.
Roland Rust BMGT457 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/22/2012	Awful professor...most boring class and super hard grader...talks about himself all class and how important he is...only class ive ever hated and only professor i ever couldnt stand...i get As and Bs, minus this class