The University of North Carolina System Employee Reviews about "budget cuts"

Pros

University works to make sure you have professional dignity

Cons

Politics can interfere with research. Budget cuts

Pros

Fast paced, stimulating environment. Good colleagues. Fairly good flexibility to get the projects done. Discounted prices for many university events and some local companies as well. Nice area.

Cons

The university system is not supported by the state legislature. Nationally, academia is in a state of flux. The system relies too much on the free labor of graduate students and nearly free labor of Post-Docs. Because of constant budget cuts to universities and research funding at both the state and federal level over the last decade, obtaining funding takes precedent over all else. The administration is only... interested in how much money you bring in. No job security. No raises. No method to supplement salary . The administration is replacing tenured faculty with research faculty to save money. Very difficult to transition from academia to industry. Pervasive myth in industry that faculty at universities are not driven enough.

Advice to Management

Research divisions need to restructure. Take fewer PhD students, more masters students. Create separate PhD and masters tracts. Need to stop treating research faculty as a commodity or start paying these people industry wages.

Pros

Beautiful campus and great campus transportation system, good health benefits through the university hospital and exciting research!

Cons

Supportive environment but as with many state universities, lots of uncertainty due to budget cuts, especially in the administration sector.

Pros

Opportunities for research and collaboration abound. If you know what you want to do, and are interested in finding interdisciplinary collaborators, there are essentially unlimited possibilities for cutting-edge research. Chapel Hill is a beautiful place to live. Can't beat the weather, access to nearby cities (and the airport is a 25 minute drive!), and general cultural diversity.

Cons

Salaries are competitive, but living in the area is expensive - housing in particular. Expect to pay "big city" prices if you want to live close to campus. State budget cuts have left some basic services and building upkeep by the wayside. It's hit and miss - some areas of campus are state-of-the-art, others are attended to only once they start (literally) falling apart.

Advice to Management

Administrative staffing seems to have become more bare-bones since I arrived here.

Pros

The salary and benefits are okay, and the people I worked with were fantastic. Because it's such a big University, there are systems in place to help someone working there. No need to re-invent the wheel for a lot of processes.

Cons

I worked at the university for over six years, and never once got a cost of living increase. The recession hit the University hard, but it seemed like they were taking the budget cuts out on the lowest paid employees. Training was cut, making it much harder/impossible to advance into a better position. And the general feel of the office was "it's better than being unemployed", which is basically blackmailing... employees to keep working for less pay.

Pros

-People -Top Research University -Flexible Time Off/ Hours

Cons

-Low Salaries -Budget Cuts -Everyone is almost too busy

Advice to Management

n/a

Pros

Good location, good proximity to a high density of technical jobs (important as graduation approaches), well rounded experience between teaching and research, good lab facilities and good faculty.

Cons

Poor communication between administration and departments, especially at the graduate student level (last to know about anything new), budget cuts have hurt research budgets in recent years.

Advice to Management

Improve communication, do a better job keeping people informed about requirements and new developments, as well as what they mean.

Pros

People are friendly and helpful. The campus is beautiful. The work culture is exciting and motivating while also being relaxed and supportive.

Cons

State budget cuts easily threaten many jobs and programs, but this is to be expected at any state school in the current economy.

Advice to Management

Those of you with whom I have worked are doing a good job and the chairs and deans with whom I have worked directly have all been exceptional.