Do you get to take classes at little or no cost? Just curious. I'm applying for some computer jobs around NCSU and was just curious if you get this as a benefit of employment.

3/3/2008 9:16:24 PM

i think you get one class for free per semester

3/3/2008 9:33:29 PM

i was unaware of the free class thing. that's fucking sweet.

3/3/2008 9:46:17 PM

You also get the state employee's health insurance, which is above average.

3/3/2008 9:49:13 PM

Top flight athletic teams

3/3/2008 9:49:38 PM

^ he said NCSU, not NCCU!

[/sarcasm]

[Edited on March 3, 2008 at 10:04 PM. Reason : .]

3/3/2008 10:04:12 PM

Well I'm already a state employee, so I got the state health insurance. I really want to move back to Raleigh and continue my IT work, and I have not completed my degree yet, so I can't drop my name at somewhere like IBM. Was interested in city schools or universities so I can stay in the state retirement program. I saw that it said tuition waiver for employees on the NCSU site, but that was all I could get, and knowing some employees are on here, I was just hoping somebody could elaborate on that benefit. Would be nice to basically work and get the rest of my credits for a degree for free.

3/3/2008 10:07:53 PM

job security if you are a head coach

3/3/2008 10:13:42 PM

basically you get to take one class per semester for only 7 bucks.........might be a smidge higher by now

but its still gonna be dirt cheap for that one class

3/3/2008 10:21:32 PM

they dropped the $7 fee. You get 3 classes per year for free.

3/3/2008 10:28:57 PM

One thing to consider is that NCSU is currently going through an IT re-org and is in a great deal of turmoil. On one hand, it may not be a good time to get caught up in that, on the other hand, there is a lot of turnover.

3/3/2008 10:33:26 PM

Really? Is that in the different departments, or just the IT Dept. itself? The job I was looking at was in one of the colleges itself and not in the main IT dept.

3/3/2008 10:54:46 PM

just ITD... well, now it's OIT... they merged with ETSS

3/4/2008 2:06:06 AM

Is this assuming you work full time?

I part-time tutor for the Athletic Dept (ASPSA) and get 0 benefits outside of my 10.25/hour.

???

3/4/2008 3:47:40 AM

The ability to join SECU, if you haven't already.

3/4/2008 7:25:40 AM

Again already a state employee, so I've been in that for years now.

3/4/2008 7:54:20 AM

You can take one class per semester (2 per summer i think) at any school in the UNC system including community colleges...

3/4/2008 10:06:33 AM

Quote :

"they dropped the $7 fee. You get 3 classes per year for free."

this is correct

for more information, check out http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/benefits/sum_benefits-spa.asp if you're looking at becoming an SPA employee...that has pretty everything you would want to know

3/4/2008 10:12:51 AM

Quote :

"Is this assuming you work full time?"

Full-time, and permanent.

3/4/2008 11:33:50 AM

^awww, man.

[Edited on March 4, 2008 at 12:01 PM. Reason : ]

3/4/2008 12:00:55 PM

my ex works in DH Hill
i wonder if she knows about this.

3/4/2008 12:10:00 PM

^ Depending on the position, DH Hill can be a separate entity from NCSU.

3/4/2008 1:59:34 PM

I'm a full-time employee taking a free class. They say we get 3 classes a year. I hear they frown upon taking 2 at a time or both summer sessions though. I was annoyed by the paperwork involved. You have to fill out a form, get your supervisor's permission, hunt down a dean/department head to sign off on it, and turn the form into R&R. It wasn't that bad, but that's a lot of running around campus and permission-getting for what's supposed to be a benefit.

3/4/2008 4:46:53 PM

i've never had much trouble with it. i'm on my 6th free class, i think, and the process is pretty easy. three signatures (including your own) and a walk to harris hall, that's all it is. zero dollars plus textbooks.

3/4/2008 6:08:36 PM

Anybody that works at State, or nearby, can you tell me if there are any family oriented apartment complexes near campus that I could look for a 2-3 bedroom place, in case I do get called for a job interview and want to know what the cost of living nearby is? I have two small children, so I'm not interested in living in a college style apartment area.

If its not something within a couple miles of campus, can anybody suggest a nice apartment complex that isn't fucking ubar expensive within say 10 miles of campus?

[Edited on March 7, 2008 at 1:38 PM. Reason : ]

3/7/2008 1:33:20 PM

Define "family oriented". There are plenty of places that are relatively quiet. Cameron Village condos (if you can find one that's renting rather than selling) are nice, and close, and immediately adjacent to Fletcher park, which sorta makes up for the complex not having a playground of its own. But it's more couples/young professionals/etc. than it is families. You could also look into some of the places that will have students, but not a LOT of them, like Wild Woods of Lake Johnson, Lake Johnson Mews, some of those places over by Crossroads, etc.

3/7/2008 2:31:50 PM

I was thinking places that were going to have a playground, possibly a pool, and not going to have a bunch of beer drinking college kids making a shitload of noise.

I was looking at places maybe in Cary. Like Hidden Oaks (which looks pretty but some reviews were pretty rough on it) or The Maples at Kildaire, which doesn't have a ton of amenities, but goes to Adams Elem., Lufkin Middle and Cary HS and has your own backyard. Shit like that.

3/7/2008 3:04:01 PM

The free class is the best part. It was 1/semester @ $7 when I worked there. Other "benefits" didn't outweigh that though.

1) If you want family health coverage (spouse + children) you were looking at $485/month, and that was about 3 years ago. I can't imagine it being much better.

2) You get a raise when the legislature says you do. That happened once in the 4 years I was there. I think it was a 2% raise. They gave "bonus leave" in the years that they didn't give raises with amounted to even more leave time that you had but could never possibly use.


There were a few bright spots...

Enough sick days, vacation, and bonus leave than any reasonable person could ever take. When I was there one person on the staff was sick like every single Friday. They pretty much worked 4 day weeks. All that and I'm positive they didn't come close to using all of their sick time. I think I had some 600 hours of just sick time accumulated when I left.




[Edited on March 7, 2008 at 3:29 PM. Reason : -]

3/7/2008 3:25:28 PM

bjferno

3/7/2008 3:27:48 PM

ES
KING
VILLAGE

3/7/2008 3:51:10 PM

The last few years the legislature has been very good at raises. I think its been 4% (at least). The UNC system is talking about breaking away from the State Pay Act and possibly paying more to retain employees (which could be good or bad)..

3/7/2008 4:04:34 PM

No Raise in 2005, but 40 hours of non expiring bonus leave.
Raise in 2006 was around 5%.
Raise in 2007 was around 4%.

The state is now on a great PPO health insurance plan. MUCH better than the previous state plan. Bad thing is that the prescription plan is still not very good.

You are REQUIRED to contribute 6% of your salary (full time) into the state pension plan. The state pension plan is ranked the no 2 pension plan across ALL STATES (it is very very good). after 5 years, you are vested, and will at minimum receive money from the pension and get health insurance at an affordable rate when you retire.

You will most likely be an SPA employee, meaning that you are given lots of protections from being laid off without cause. Reductions in force do happen in the state, but not as often as corporate (from my own personal experience). As mentioned above, its possible SPA will go away, but there is HUGE resistance to this. I doubt it happens anytime soon.

UNC currently is allowed staff to enroll at UNC at some super reduced rate (actually take a part/full time load) and actually some of your time in classes COUNTS AT WORK TIME.

Lots of lots of benefits.

[Edited on March 7, 2008 at 4:15 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2008 4:14:37 PM

Quote :

"The free class is the best part. It was 1/semester @ $7 when I worked there. Other "benefits" didn't outweigh that though. 1) If you want family health coverage (spouse + children) you were looking at $485/month, and that was about 3 years ago. I can't imagine it being much better. 2) You get a raise when the legislature says you do. That happened once in the 4 years I was there. I think it was a 2% raise. They gave "bonus leave" in the years that they didn't give raises with amounted to even more leave time that you had but could never possibly use."

this has largely changed (our HR guy went through how it used to be)...the family health coverage is much cheaper and the coverage itself is MUCH MUCH better than it was a few years back (BCBS can be an ass sometimes, but since my only other coverage was through my mom and through duke, it's unfair for me to compare BCBS to wellpath)

the raises and such have supposedly improved as well, but since i'm still relatively new, i only have the word of others to go on

3/7/2008 4:25:34 PM

Freshman girls.

3/7/2008 4:26:47 PM

From the sound of things it looks like I worked there during the worst possible time. Typical.

3/7/2008 4:49:50 PM

^ honestly? yeah...i've been told by a number of people (some in HR, some where i work, and by friends), that it's gotten a lot better...since i don't know any difference, i've been very impressed with the health coverage and benefits, especially for a state job (actually, i brought it up in a SAS thread, and it was my opinion at the time that, based on which benefits actually benefit me the most, NCSU was a preferable job to SAS in the same field)

3/7/2008 7:10:57 PM

deciding factor for me was the work atmosphere and the networking opportunities for the professors i need to take classes with

3/7/2008 10:28:48 PM

booooo networking is lame

3/7/2008 10:42:46 PM

BTW, does faculty get a crack at reduced price tickets or first shot at the available pool or something? Just curious what sorta sports benefit I might get from working at NCSU.

3/9/2008 11:06:48 AM

At UNC, you get a season pass (free) for all non revenue sports. Dont really get much else in way of basetball tickets.

3/9/2008 12:25:41 PM

NCSU has a pool of season tickets for faculty and staff to buy, but there is a waiting list and I don't think it is any cheaper. So you would probably be better off buying them with the general public.

3/9/2008 12:28:39 PM

low pay

3/9/2008 12:34:36 PM

football and basketball tickets are discounted, i want to say 25% (i haven't done the math)

3/9/2008 8:54:30 PM

Oh, I almost forgot.

One time Gov. Easley declared an "employee appreciation week." He declared it on the Wednesday afternoon of the actual week, so half of your opportunity to be appreciated had already gone by before the announcement.


Turns out you were appreciated by being allowed to by 25 cents/slice pizza (or was it 50 cents) in Reynolds Coliseum. The pizza ran out before I got there - around 12:30 or so.

I'd say that their employee appreciation strategy worked.

My gut tells me that they wanted to do the appreciation week because there was to be news of rising health care costs/no raises on a Friday. They didn't want to tell anyone about the week until Wednesday so employees would still be on that high of hearing that they were to be appreciated that week. If you actually told them ahead of time they'd forget by the time the bad news came along. Wow. I'm the most cynical person ever.

3/9/2008 9:21:51 PM

what if you were interning full-time over the summer with NC State, would the 3 free classes still apply you think?

3/10/2008 11:26:21 AM

No, because that's not a permanent position.

3/10/2008 11:43:52 AM

One thing that's different about working at NCSU vs. the state is that NCSU only allows so many vacation/sick hours to accure. I think the max you could have is 240 hours.

Of course with the state, you can build up as many as you want to, but that is not the case with NCSU.

It might be that the policy varies by department/position, but that at least some employees have caps on their leave.

3/11/2008 12:23:16 PM

^ i work at ncsu and have more than 240 hours sick leave accrued

[Edited on March 11, 2008 at 6:03 PM. Reason : -]

3/11/2008 6:00:25 PM

^^^^^

Employee appreciation day has been like that for the past 3 years or so. Within the last two years though they moved it to be during Spring Break and most of us would honestly just prefer to be appreciated by being given a Spring Break instead

3/11/2008 6:11:14 PM

^^^ you mean comp time

some departments don't pay overtime so you get comp time instead (basically time off, like paid vacation)

they limit the amount of comp time you can earn, I'm sure it's different for each department

they don't limit your sick time. my department had a guy out sick for the past 2 months and he had 20 years of sick time built up so he got paid for 2 months while he was in the hospital

[Edited on March 11, 2008 at 6:17 PM. Reason : ASDF]

3/11/2008 6:16:50 PM