Northwestern University Reviews

Pros

Best benefits, beautiful campus, wonderful City to live in and work in. I've always loved the setting and people. Great location.

Cons

Lower salaries compared to other industries. Very limited as far as promotion possibilities. Parking is horrible, and monthly parking costs are exorbitant.

Pros

Northwestern ha very good infrastructure and employee support on multiple dimensions. There is a strong culture of cooperative learning and many departments and institutes have newsletters; talks; and conferences. Northwestern supports many types of personal and professional development. Other people like working here, so it's a positive work environment.

Cons

Salary is probably lower than at corporate entities, but job security is likely higher.

Pros

Shared facilities are well equipped. Collaborations are highly encouraged. Competitive compensation. Great location. Highly ranked in many fields. Always opportunities to expand knowledge base.

Cons

It's a private university, so the undergrad population can seem a bit stuck-up and entitled at times. The graduate population and undergraduate populations are kept fairly separate unless you try very hard to integrate.

Advice to Senior Management

Well, keep doing what you're doing. There seems to be a strong emphasis on trying to hear what the students need and then acting on that and making changes.

Pros

World-class academic environment -- there are freakin Nobel Laureates here.
Good benefits (retirement; tuition coverage is okay)
Pretty decent work/life balance
Morty has a fantastic view of what a university community can/should be

Cons

Fair amount of pretense that comes with being a world-class university
There are some administrators who make arbitrary decisions/promotion and are S-L-O-W to change
Decentralized -- there's central admin, then the individual schools/institutes. Can be hard to have a connection because of this.

Advice to Senior Management

It'd be nice if there was more purposeful/direct tracks to career growth -- it's called Performance Excellence, so be purposeful of why we should perform excellently. Like many higher ed environments, there are some people who have been there for ages who have hit the ceiling and are just phoning it in -- it'd be nice if there was some sort of incentive/requirement for folks to keep evolving with the pace of the private sector.

Pros

*Employees at Kellogg
*Activities at Kellogg/NU
*Temp workers are very competent

Cons

*Can only temp 1000 hours in a year
*Applying online is a lie
*Cannot get hired due to too much internal politics
*Do not take people at their word to help you, b/c they will NOT.
*Temp workers are paid less than full time workers hourly.
*Temp center is run by fools.

Advice to Senior Management

If you appreciate the hard work of your temps, then by all means hire them full-time. Give back more than you take in. For goodness sake, you have a 7 Billion $ endowment, couldn't you at least hire qualified people in this awful economy.

Pros

Pay is reasonable and there is a constant sense of mission with the students around you everywhere you might go. Perhaps also the pay is pretty good.

Cons

There is also a limiting sensibility because of the lack of any traditional hierarchical corporate structure so advancement can be tough. I feel like this should be expected.

Advice to Senior Management

Open up the workplace to better managerial techniques - take Kellogg and apply it home, it will make for happier/healthier employees

Pros

A large university that is almost always hiring for a wide variety of staff positions. As an entry-level or early career employee, it can be easy to rise quickly if you excel at your job, BUT this depends on your department management. In some instances there may be more opportunities for rapid growth than in corporate, since there frankly isn't much competition among lower-level staff (or upper management, for that matter). It's easy to find things that could be improved and implement procedures to improve them - but you may have to fight for recognition afterward.

Outstanding benefits. Automatic 5% contribution towards retirement, plus the university will match your contribution up to an additional 5%. That means you can contribute 5% of your income to retirement and actually be saving 15% per year.

75-80% tuition benefit. The School of Continuing Studies has some good evening certificate and graduate programs for working professionals (though classes may be offered only in Evanston, or only in Chicago, at any given time).

They are *trying* to be more progressive when it comes to staff, hosting networking and professional development events and the like.

Cons

Faculty can be downright rude and disrespectful; stay away from positions that deal with faculty if you can help it. I cannot emphasize this enough. They also have no idea how to be administrators or work with staff, and the learning curve is steep every time a faculty member takes on an administrative role.

Somewhat rigid HR policies concerning raises and promotions, values years of experience over performance.

Senior staff love them some bureaucracy. Getting any changes implemented takes forever. Very hierarchical management, I don't think they've ever heard of "moving towards a flatter organizational structure."

No one ever loses their job, even people who EVERYONE knows would have been fired long ago in the private sector. This lowers morale.

Staff are a weird mix of folks - some very professional, motivated and talented people, and then a lot of folks who are just like characters from "The Office" (think Dwight, Angela, and Creed types).

There are some great individuals on the IT team, but the way the whole IT operation is run is insane. The individual school IT departments have WAY too much autonomy, creating huge disparities between schools when it comes to software upgrades, websites, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Crack down on those who don't do their jobs properly, from the staff on the lowest rung all the way up to Associate Deans (and even Deans). This will boost morale among high-performers. Confronting issues is part of managing and leading; help set an example for junior staff by being a little confrontational!

Pros

NU has a prestigious reputation; you will gain notable experience in higher education practices working for this university. The reputation keeps outstanding individuals coming to work for them; you can expect to work with some top talent. Pleasant working environments in Evanston and Chicago campuses, and parking is quite reasonable. Security is well implemented on campus and provides a safe working environment. The college offers a significant tuition reimbursement opportunity, as a staff member you have excellent educational opportunities. Great place to work short term, with the right exit strategy, and can leverage this job experience to obtain employment in an organization that does over advancement opportunity.

Cons

For management this is a difficult work environment to implement change within, the University has key deficiencies in knowledge management, resource sharing, and IT governance. IT literally runs 10-15 years behind; I have even seen use of obsolete technology. For staff this is a very demanding environment, with little work life balance, 50-60 hour workweeks are not uncommon. Non competitive pay, I've seen merit increases at NU that are less then a cost a living increase, even for top performers.

While NU's reputation attracts top talent, it seems to provide little long-term benefit since best and brightest employees are quick to leave, when they realize there is little opportunity for growth. The rate of turn over is outrageous, and strains department productivity and moral. I literally saw an entire department turn over in less then a year.

Somme of the top management and leadership at NU are resistant to change, it appeared to me that they were clinging to politically driven agendas or their own vested interests, which directly resulted in errors in judgment, resulting in loss of revenue. The command and control leadership style has created a culture of fear and blame, resulting in poor communication within departments. Each department focuses on their own goals and interests. Department interdependencies remain completely overlooked in the evaluation process, each department works for itself, and fail to see how their practices works against the other or for the other. Several times I witness a department implement changes, which were never communicated, and caused critical issues for other departments.

Quite honestly it appears some schools within the university are in pattern of decline: little change, out-dated technology, high turn over, lack of credibility in leadership, and overstrained resources abound. Leadership is defiantly lacking.

Advice to Senior Management

Implement 360 HR management evaluations, include evaluations on overarching department evaluation processes to build interdependencies between departments and reduce silos. IT needs outside experts familiar with both LEAN management and IT governance, and an increased budget for technology. Reduce margins of error, redundancy, and inefficiencies and start leveraging Enterprise resources. Increase new staff pay to competitive market levels to retain high functioning staff though opportunities of advancement. Bottom line: NU cannot continue provide the best in teaching and innovative research, if they cannot retain top talent, share information, and leverage resources internally.

Pros

It's a really great and prestigious school. There's a big name that companies really like when they're looking for people.

Cons

It won't necessarily take you where you want in life. Just because of the big brand recognition doesn't guarantee jobs other places.

Pros

great learning and educational environment. superb for students and postdoctoral fellows.

Cons

heavy traffic if living in suburbs but very convenient public transportation if living in acceptable distance from the work.