Since Starkville has essentially only one employer, salaries are very low. The starting salary for the lower university staff is below a living wage for the area. If you are single, you will not be able to pay all of your bills unless you are young, in perfect health, your parents still insure your car and your car is new enough to not need to repair. Also, rent is very high given that this is MS. (Only 2-3 landlords own nearly all of the rental property in town...and one of them is the mayor)
There is no career ladder for staff. Only faculty have a path for promotions and raises. Even so, it appears that the university is filling faculty gaps with lecturers and adjunct faculty therefore driving down wages even further. The administration is grossly over paid compared to the staff level salaries. And some faculty who border on slothful get promoted to full professorship and get raises to basically sit on their hands doing nothing to affect the quality of instruction provided to students or modify their departments to change workflows to move the university into the 21st century. The university seems to purely award stability and stasis and seems completely afraid of change. Style over substance, decorum over talent.
The number of degrees/credentials required to qualify for poorly paid staff positions is absurd, but surely abetted by the lack of any local competition for well trained technical staff. No matter how above and beyond you go with your job technically, you will only get glowing reviews. There will be no promotion, no increase in salary, and there are no other jobs in town to hope to bounce to as your skills increase. There are also very few jobs on campus period...so there's nothing even to transfer into that will allow you to continue to expand your abilities. Every staff job ( I cannot speak for research positions though) is essentially a dead end job.
