Spring 2027

American Society: How It Really Works

Explains U.S. performance in realizing freedom, fairness, and democracy, covering markets, capitalism, inequality, militarism, and electoral politics.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 7

Past student reviews · Erik Wright, Joel Rogers

The workload included required weekly out-of-class movies and significant reading. One student noted that reading the book took about an hour per week and made the class manageable.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Enumerate central cultural tenets informing U.S. political and social life including equality, capitalism and democracy.

  • Apply existing social science research to evaluate the merits and drawbacks of social policies.

  • Describe avenues for public engagement in political processes and social reform efforts.

  • Compare and contrast U.S. policies to those of other countries.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

None

  • None
SOC 125

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • None

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

ERIK WRIGHT is recorded teaching in Fall 2006, Fall 2010, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Spring 2018. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

JOEL ROGERS is recorded teaching in Fall 2006, Fall 2007, Fall 2008, Fall 2009, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Fall 2025. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Erik Wright

The course covered civics topics like democracy and taxes, with lectures highlighting key information from the textbook. Grading relied on a midterm, final, and one paper.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.64 GPA, 80.0% A/AB (n=55 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.33 GPA, 61.5% A/AB (n=65 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.65 GPA, 84.6% A/AB (n=39 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Erik Wright, Joel Rogers

The workload included required weekly out-of-class movies and significant reading. One student noted that reading the book took about an hour per week and made the class manageable.

Past student reviews · Joel Rogers

Students reported that lectures were long, confusing, or drawn-out, and that tests were hard and not curved.

Topics

  • Markets, capitalism, democracy, class, race, gender inequalities, militarism, and US international role.
  • US electoral politics, media, and social mobilization.

Skills

  • Analyze and compare U.S. political and social policies with those of other countries.

Grades

Historical instructor

Spring 2027 · Projected

Before grades are released

– average GPA

Approximate 80% prediction interval

About this estimate

The course’s semester-average GPA, not an individual student’s grade. The center uses 6 recent terms, weighted toward recent results.

The range uses the finite-sample 80th-percentile rank of absolute errors from earlier same-season forecasts. Each forecast uses only records from earlier terms. At least four forecasts are required; bounds are rounded outward and limited to 0–4. This is an empirical estimate: changing instructors or grading policies can reduce its coverage.

7 earlier forecasts · 0.19 GPA average error.

Grades over time

Through Spring 2027

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2025 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1316 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

Download part 1
Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "0ead59b31eddfa1d0fce72f8f228e4b29c5b0cdeed7a6b2e2731d0c6bfbc3b28",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}