Historical instructor

JOHN WITTE

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 4.13/5 from 15 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

POLI219 · course not matched
Quality 4/5Difficulty 4/5
Overall, a good, fair teacher. Public Policy is a rather dry subject, so don't expect too much out of the lectures but if you have some previous knowledge of polisci it shouldn't be too hard. There is a lot of reading but you don't really need to do it all to do well on the test. Be prepared for a 15 page paper though.
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POLI219 · course not matched
Quality 4/5Difficulty 4/5
Witte is a great guy with a lot of knowledge backed up by his hears of experience in the field. Sometimes he may seem like a rambler but even though he is talking about himself he is really teaching you through his mistakes. Very helpful in office hours and really wants everyone to succeed. This class is a lot of reading but its not very hard.
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PS219 · course not matched
Quality 5/5Difficulty 3/5
Very knowledgable and very fair. People who complain about him generally don't care about public policy anyway. Would recommend this course to any Poli Sci major.
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PS219 · course not matched
Quality 3/5Difficulty 4/5
This is just a mediocre class. The last comment is correct: you basically read the public policy textbook and have Witte regurgitate it for you, followed by him talking about his experience. This isn't bad when it pertains, but he sometimes goes off on long tangents that make it hard to stay awake. Moral of story: take at your own risk.
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PS219 · course not matched
Quality 3/5Difficulty 3/5
Taking 219 basically means reading the assigned chapters to learn the ins and outs of Public Policy, followed by going to two power lectures a week and listening to Witte talk about his accomplishments the whole time.
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POL279 · course not matched
Quality 4/5Difficulty 4/5
A good professor but overated. Very helpful and knowlegeable. Adds humor but the actual presentation of the material is often bland and not especially well organized.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with JOHN WITTE

No teaching recorded in Fall 2026.

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Recorded teaching history

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Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance
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