[Work environment].

Key Findings ◆ In general, staff respondents in central IT organizations in higher education rate their direct managers positively in key areas of managerial performance much higher than do IT staff members in industry. ◆ Overall, IT salaries in higher education compare favorably with those in other sectors. However, although 58 percent of responding senior-most IT leaders earn more than $100,000 per year, higher education CIO salaries lag those in the private sector. ◆ Twenty-eight percent of survey respondents work in excess of 50 hours per week. Senior-most IT leader respondents report longer work weeks than others. ◆ Forty-four percent of central IT organizations described spend 1 percent or less of their budget on staff training. However, 63 percent of respondents report that they have the opportunity to learn new skills on the job. Substantial mythology exists about the nature of colleges and universities as workplaces. Regarding the work environment, many who work in higher education subscribe to the longstanding conviction that “higher education has a moral mission to fulfi ll.”1 Others remind us that academic politics are especially mean because the stakes are so low. This chapter reports on ECAR’s survey data about working conditions and key aspects of respondents’ immediate work environment, including ◆ the higher education culture, ◆ workforce diversity, ◆ managerial climate, ◆ salaries and hours worked, and ◆ staff training, professional development, and mentoring.