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Northwestern University

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Retention Issues for a Reason - Clinical Research Coordinator Northwestern University Employee Review

2.0
Nov 6, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Northwestern’s Cancer Center seems to really value staff professional development. They’re big into meetings and trainings.

Cons

Staff retention is very poor. People leave after 3 months, 6 months, or many under a year. Very few people have been here more than a couple years. The management, while well structured compared to other universities, is very poorly executed, and no one ever seems to know what they’re doing. There are huge gaps when you start because people just don’t do their work, and at a large organization, you can never as one person work enough to fix things that many people have neglected for years. You’re a number not a person here, and everyone just does enough to get by, not actually thrive or succeed.

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5.0
Jul 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Great work experience, and I got to work with a professor during the process.

Cons

Can be more difficult to get higher pay

4.0
Jul 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's steady and stable money. Coworkers can be great, and benefits can be good**

Cons

They recently changed all of the benefits due to the government administration pulling federal funding. They changed from Blue Cross Blue Shield to United so the insurance is pretty bad now, with higher premiums and higher copays. You get a 90% discount on tuition, yet also about 97% of the graduate programs are when you'd be working during a 9-5. So it's nearly impossible to actually utilize your tuition discount. There were a lot of budget cuts, and 3% bonuses were one of the first to go. Your base pay is usually underpaid because it's higher education/nonprofit, and the 3% raise is barely enough to cover the rise of cost of living. So now it's underpaid, bad or unusable benefits, and low morale because there were also so many layoffs with the rest of the employees having to do the work of multiple people. Systems in the university are antiquated and it takes forever for anything to get done and most of it is trial and error. They say there is mobility, but it's only lateral if you're lucky. I've been here for two years and there's been such high turnover in senior management including the President that everything feels up in the air.

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