Berklee reviews

3.9

76% would recommend to a friend

(379 total reviews)
avatar

Jim Lucchese

78% approve of CEO

63% positive business outlook

Berklee has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 379 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Berklee employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Education industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

379 reviews
1.0
Aug 12, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Students are the only reason to work here. They rock.

Cons

This is a place that does not value employees. There is an inverted pyramid with top heavy management using a dictatorial top-down style of management. The culture is actually toxic. The management is pretty clueless about the strategic imperatives and focuses on petty turf-protecting infighting. Hard to find a worse bunch anywhere. Nobody gets a second chance, there is a pervasive atmosphere of fear. This used to be a decent place to work, now it is horrible. Roger Brown should go back to managing money at his hedge funds, he knows little to nothing about music, academics, or managing people. The board of trustees and advisors is a bunch of paper pushing suits that have no connection to the music industry.

1.0
Oct 4, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The students we have the opportunity to advise and work with daily are among the most talented and skilled performers, artists, and musicians.

Cons

Poor human resource management, and upper leadership is incredibly averse to any feedback- or solution-based conversations from on-the-ground assistant directors and advisors.

1.0
Mar 31, 2022

Good people, terrible management, pay, and benefits

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

My coworkers were nice, and the time off for Thanksgiving and the week between Christmas and New Years was a nice perk.

Cons

Right now Berklee is a sinking, direction-less boat. At the outset of the pandemic they laid off dozens of staff members. Some were furloughed and brought back, and some were just let go entirely. Faculty are in a union so employee cuts had to come from staff (or at least that's my understanding). I wish staff had a union too because it often feels like staff have no protection from the changing whims of leadership, as we saw with the furloughs. Not once did Berklee dip into it's endowment to help prevent lay offs, as other higher ed institutions in the area did. The pay is VERY low, even among higher ed, and Berklee just refuses to raise pay to retain employees, so people are leaving in droves and they are having trouble hiring replacements, probably because the compensation is so terrible. Fast-forward to 2022, people are leaving, pay is stagnant, benefits are sub-par, but the institution decided to spend boatloads of money to reorganize parts of the college in ways that are chaotic and harmful to staff morale. I hope that they're right and the reorg does improve things for students, but in the mean time this is one of the last straws for a lot of people who just don't want to deal with the stressful environment anymore. The president just really, truly does not seem to care about the staff. It's also worth mentioning that the management has made a lot of diversity and inclusion blunders, and have a very poor record of disciplining faculty and staff accused of misconduct.

Viewing 4 - 6 of 379 Reviews

Glassdoor has 411 Berklee reviews submitted anonymously by Berklee employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Berklee is right for you.