Toxic Chemistry Department - Graduate Research Assistant Northwestern University Employee Review

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

Can be more difficult to get higher pay

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

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.