Top leadership is insular, mostly promoted from within, and a shocking number of them are BS/MS/PhD graduates (or some combination) of Virginia Tech. The Old Boys Network is alive and well, so if you're an old boy, you should do fine. Very little communication from the top down creates huge gaps in people's knowledge, and decisions therefore seem arbitrary and ill-conceived (many of them, in fact, are). If you work in Blacksburg, you can feel isolated from the rest of the world - or worse, come to view Blacksburg as the obvious Center of the Universe. If you work outside of Blacksburg, good luck getting anyone's attention (unless you're an Old Boy). Absolutely zero training to prepare faculty to take leadership roles in administration, and absolutely zero interest in the notion that people outside rank and file teaching faculty can be competent administrators. Which means problems with incompetent management, high turnover, and horrible morale. During several rounds of severe budget cuts, the top people in the university kept their salaries in place while agreeing to fire $20,000 per year secretaries and groundskeepers.
