Columbia University Reviews in New York City, NY Area

Pros

Columbia has great benefits, including tuition for yourself and dependants.

Cons

Restructuring of positions and internal transfers only approves a 10 percent increase.

Advice to Senior Management

Position reclassifications should be considered and reviewed according to the employee's experience. Guidelines should be followed no matter what the nature of the position transition is.

Pros

Prestige and sense of belonging to an elite. Potential for fruitful networking and for successful career development both in academia and industry

Cons

The University does not perform at the level you would expect for such a prestigious institution in the filed of basic research and biomedical sciences

Advice to Senior Management

Attention has to be paid to the fact that very little high impact publications are produced at CUMC as a function of the amount of researchers working there.

Pros

work/life balanced. Not much pressure.

Cons

salary is so so. It is non-profit organization.

Advice to Senior Management

Columbia University is too big. Nobody can change it.

Pros

great faculty, extremely experienced and knowledgeable

Cons

core curriculum boring, need to adjust more

Advice to Senior Management

split students into backgrounds, test more students out of core, exempt more courses. offer more management and advanced markets classes

Pros

As a part-time student, my employer was very accommodating. They also did their best to make us comfortable.

Cons

It was very difficult as a full-time student to balance class with work, but I guess that's not the school's fault.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with working there and have no major advice for the leaders.

Pros

Diversity. A great learning experience.

Cons

Long hours but overall rewarding

Advice to Senior Management

Employee morale can be boosted by simple thank you's and good job every now and then.

Pros

If you are any sort of employee for Columbia, the benefits are excellent, with good medical insurance, dental coverage, vision riders, a relatively large amount of vacation time, nice 401(k) matching, and excellent educational opportunities.

Cons

Columbia has one of the ugliest bureaucracies I have ever dealt with. As an RA, I was generally isolated from that, but if you had to work in HR in the Interchurch building, I can imagine wanting to tear your hair out after a month.

The IT support could improve. They've been getting better, but it still has a ways to go.

Advice to Senior Management

Streamline the bureaucracy, modernize the way the CUIT operates and handles billing (charging people for Ethernet ports is counter-productive), make opt-in the default for 401(k)'s, and improve library access from off-campus.

Pros

Excellent potential for advancement and great facilities and resources. Top of the line network to help you reach your goals after some time there.

Cons

If you end up in a research group with a tough advisor, this can be unpleasant. Lots of red tape.

Advice to Senior Management

Thin the red tape. Hold Principal investigators accountable for poor treatment of team members

Pros

The ability to interact with other departments and physicians at a well respected Ivy League University in a fantastic City.

Cons

A lack of direction from senior leadership leads to wasted effort.

Pros

Great benefits package for employees and actually very little works is involved

Cons

It's a university, bureaucratic, inefficient, and has plenty of people just sitting there who aren't actually generating value

Advice to Senior Management

Please fire half the people here. Don't just keep them because they've worked here for 10 years, if they get lazy, no money for them.