A LOT OF RED TAPE. Very bureaucratic environment, and it is very apparent that upper management does not care very much if at all for the employees under them. So many rules that need to be followed that certain services become unavailable to people if they are missing a single document. If I didn't need to worry for my job I'd just let it slide under the table, but regulations and my bosses say otherwise.
There have been multiple instances where employees were let go due to "insufficient budget to pay for their salaries" yet the administrator's salaries keep on increasing... I know that this occurred at multiple locations across the UCSC system through both word of mouth and through personal experience.
An administrator literally had a conversation in front of me about how she was planning on firing all of student employees who worked there so that she can get a salary boost instead. And sure enough, it happened.
Also, superiors plagiarising their employees' work is commonplace here. And people getting fired out of nowhere. There's also a recurring theme of people being severely underpaid and forced to do multiple peoples' jobs or else they would be fired. You know this is bad when those very people gripe about this to you and from multiple individuals.
The total lack of communication between the departments (academic, administrative, and business) leads of a lot of inefficiency and again, red tape. It's pretty bad, even for a public institution.
Also, a lot of rules that are, quite frankly speaking, outdated and laughable. For instance, did you know that UCSC can be expanded AS LONG AS no part of campus is visible from the city? And people wonder why there's a diminishing number of jobs and opportunities on this campus, besides the PR fluff that is published all the time.
A good bit of corruption and nepotism happens here. I wish I were joking.
