Arizona State University reviews

Many people accept the lower pay at academic institutions in exchange for not working in a corporate environment. Since Michael Crow came on as President, the environment at ASU has become increasingly corporate-like (for both faculty and staff) without any corresponding pay increase. In fact, we went 5 years without raises (plus with furloughs one year) except there was still money in the salary budget to recruit very expensive senior faculty (i.e., they became famous at another school from which the retired to come to ASU so Crow could claim that some famous person works here), create an extremely top heavy (and very well paid) upper administration, and artificially promote management in order to bypass the pay freeze. ASU also created a policy to limit the amount of pay increase a non-managerial staff person could receive when moving to a new department (historically one of the only ways to get a real pay raise at ASU). Some high level administrators make as much as 3 times the amount many of the senior faculty make yet contribute very little to the quality of the education or research at ASU. Typically, those who generate the revenue get little or no benefit from their work while the upper administration (which often makes the revenue generators jobs harder rather than easier) make the big bucks. The direction of the university seems to be determined by Crow's ego rather than what is good for students, the university, or the broader Phoenix metro and State of Arizona community (the disastrously expensive ASU Medical School failure being a case in point). Departments vary tremendously in size and structure and, unless your job is in the university-wide administration, career advancement almost always requires changing departments. Depending on the position, there isn't always a good reporting structure if you are having problems with your job. If you work directly for a faculty member, they are almost like a mini CEO and you can't really go over their head if they behave badly - so there is nothing you can do about a bad boss. This is also true if you work in a small department or center. HR is pretty much ineffective and some of the nastiest and most abusive faculty members are so bad that even HR won't reprimand them. All employees are basically contract employees so your supervisor can decide to get rid of you for any reason at the end of the fiscal year (although they do have to give you 90 days notice of non-renewal of your contract). This was a recent change which was, like so many corporate 1984ish double speak, touted as something "beneficial" to employees. The better paying and better career opportunity jobs are at the university-wide administrative level. However, they only seem to want to hire "yes men" in those positions. People who raised legitimate concerns about significant policy changes (some of which were disastrous and continue to create problems even after many years) have slowly disappeared from the university. Unless you are an outside hire at a top level, challenging the status quo is an absolute no-no - regardless of your level of experience or expertise. The upper administration wants the exact opposite of Lincoln's "team of rivals". Creative and innovative thinkers are welcome within specific departments but they might as well give up on advancing to the upper administrative level.

The School of Life Sciences is fraught with terrific egos, resultant power and fame struggles, and an emerging good 'ole boys network accessible only by those that speak Spanish. The undergraduate students attend classes of 300+ and have practically zero access to their professors because teaching is about #55 on their priority list, seeing as how they have to devote the majority of their time to research or climbing administrative ladders. Only a handful of professors stand out as genuine, balanced people that are effective in their teaching responsibilities and mentoring responsibilities in regard to their graduate students. Many professors have extremely unprofessional personalities and approaches to dealing with their students, both inside the classroom and laboratory settings. Mistreatment of graduate students is not uncommon and there is virtually zero accountability on the part of the tenured faculty--the stories are mind-bending. If you are considering attending this particular school within ASU, you may want to reconsider a smaller school if you like professors that are engaged, balanced, and have more time to devote to being an ACTUAL professor.