"Would you like a snack?" The head of the search committee cracked open a plastic container of dry grocery-store chocolate-chip cookies. Mom taught me to be polite, so I took one to go with the bottle of water I had just been offered.
The water was welcome as I settled into my seat in a small room on an upper floor of a 19th-century building, where a noisy window air conditioner struggled against the heat. The members of the search committee sat squeezed around the conference table awaiting the start of my interview for a midlevel administrative opening at Flagship State U.
I had applied for the position in an effort to move up from my low-level administrative job at a respected private university; the opportunity at Flagship State looked like my best prospect so far. Yet as I bit into the hard cookie and felt sweat trickle down my back, my heart sank.
At my well-endowed private university, I had gotten used to certain creature comforts. I had a large (and cool) office in a renovated building with refinished hardwood floors and stylish lighting. My university credit card paid for professional meals and travel. And the food -- oh, the catered food. Our program sponsored numerous public events, nearly always accompanied by buffets offering scones, coffee, fruit, and brownies or full lunches of elegant international cuisine.
Sweltering in that hot interview room and looking at the sad cookie container, I knew the new position would never offer the luxuries I had (I admit) come to enjoy. But the interview went well. When Flagship State called to make me an offer and met my salary requirements, my decision was easy: I took the job.
All in all, I am glad I did. But the transition has given me a chance to look beyond the cookies to reflect on some cultural differences between private and public universities.
Soon after my arrival, I went to pick up my university purchasing card. Rather than the perfunctory training class I'd had at the private university ("Don't use this to buy flowers!" the human-resources folks had cautioned, sending me on my way), at Flagship State I sat through a two-hour session detailing the many tight restrictions on spending university money.
Using the card to purchase food from grocery stores was OK, but not from restaurants. Travel required a completely different card, with charges paid by the cardholder (i.e., me) and reimbursed later by the university. Office supplies had to be bought from appropriate vendors on state contract. Improper management of state funds would bring the state auditor knocking. I tucked the card into my wallet, unsure if I would ever be bold enough to use it.
The office environment, too, was a downward move. My building lacks an elevator. Most of the windows don't open but don't quite close either, so it can be cold and drafty in the winter, and hot and stuffy in the summer. The building had the potential to be charming, but with dingy carpet, chipped paint, and stuff piled around, it felt depressing.
Early on, I wondered if I had made a mistake. But over time, I have realized that, despite its comparatively modest facilities and restricted budget, this public university is the more humane place to work.
I don't mean to suggest that there aren't many kind, intelligent, accomplished, and warm people at the private university. But my present employer's public mission, which it takes very seriously, makes a real difference in the overall work culture.
The state university attracts and nurtures faculty and staff members who are interested, and rooted, in the place where we all live. Many colleagues have been here for 20 or 30 years; some are alums whose connection to the university is deep and long-standing. They know and care about the town. They vacation in the beautiful parts of our state. They want to be here.
That commitment translates into their research and teaching. Many faculty members study problems faced by our state. A language of public engagement pervades university discourse, and individual faculty and staff members seek to be responsive to public needs, to steward public funds, and to serve the public good.
Having lived in the same state for more than a decade (the private university where I used to work is located in that state, too) and done research and written on its history, I have been thriving at the public university. When I talk to people here about my scholarly work, they actually want to know more.
By contrast, when I spoke about my research to faculty colleagues at my former university, they barely knew the places I was talking about, and many seemed to view my work as parochial. They were people on the make, plotting their next professional move -- passing through from somewhere else and eager to take the next plane, train, or BMW out of town.
When the semester ended, they rushed off to their "places" in New York, New England, London, or Paris. Their research focused on foreign or exotic regions; "local" work was fine so long as "local" was somewhere else.
Palpable differences emerged as well in attitudes toward money. The private university had almost unlimited dollars for the activities of the small program in which I worked. While that enabled us to offer many high-quality public and academic events, the easy flow of cash created a culture of elitism and entitlement in which faculty members -- even those on the political left -- participated eagerly.
Visiting scholars were routinely treated (on the university tab) to dinners at four-star restaurants where faculty hosts thought nothing of uncorking multiple $80 bottles of wine. So frequent were those dinners that one faculty member declared how tired he was of a particular high-end restaurant -- one I couldn't afford to visit on my own dime at all.
The university was more hesitant to spend money so freely, however, when the requests came from administrative staff members. While I routinely received money for professional travel expenses, it was granted reluctantly. A high-living supervisor once asked me to seek a hotel than was cheaper than the one where a conference I planned to attend would be held -- something that supervisor never did.
The easy money, which financed generous employee benefits, did not, however, produce generous salaries for most administrative employees. Indeed, the university was notoriously penurious when it came to our raises, and its human-resources regulations kept most of us earning less than $50,000 a year. Meanwhile, its "rich get richer" retirement plan offered a generous employer match for people earning salaries at the higher end of the pay scale.
The benefits package at Flagship State U. is more meager, but I have found a greater generosity of spirit with regard to money for administrative staff members here. My salary negotiations were easy, even friendly, and I did not have to lobby hard to garner a salary package that makes me feel valued and appropriately compensated.
I was offered ample travel funds even before I asked. My bosses renovated an office for me, carving out a bright and attractive space for me in this old building. I could not have asked for more generous treatment from a perennially cash-strapped institution.
That generosity stems partly from a lack of pretense and posturing among many of the faculty members with whom I work. They seem less concerned than were professors at my former university about enforcing a faculty-staff hierarchy. It still exists, to be sure, but its effects are more muted, especially for a staff member like me, who has a Ph.D. and peer-reviewed publications.
Colleagues in my discipline at Flagship State value my work on our region and have welcomed me as an adjunct instructor -- an opportunity never even mentioned at my previous post.
There is something wonderfully transparent about working in a public institution. Salary records, for instance, are public information. Rather than guessing (and whispering) about who is getting paid what, it's possible to find out. So there is less potential for the kind of abuse that was reported (but often never quite verified) at my former university, where extraordinary salaries were supposedly offered to some individuals for reasons unrelated to competence.
Of course, the openness can be scary. Meetings and records are subject to sunshine laws, so special care must be taken about what is said or written. But that challenge seems worth the trade-off of getting away from the rampant secrecy that -- when combined with an active rumor mill -- made for a competitive and sometimes sinister environment at the private university.
Earlier this summer, I headed out on a statewide tour that the university organizes each year to acquaint new faculty and staff members with the places and people we serve. With a group that included new deans and division heads, tenured professors, new assistant professors, and a sprinkling of staff members, I spent several days learning about the state's economy, history, culture, and environment, and about projects our university carries on around the state.
My traveling companions were all bright and accomplished, engaged with the things we were seeing and learning, and generous to our hosts and to one another. The tour helped confirm the enduring, equalizing, and humanizing value of public higher education, of which I am now proud to be a part.
