Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
dude, nus admin don't earn that much. maybe the acad staff do.
NUS admin has 6 grades (degree holders) for non-degree holders, their pay are according to union rules.
fresh grad starts at lowest grade and a long serving director of a large and important departant (e.g. IT) is grade 1. grade 1's salary is above $10k per mth. you will be very lucky if you retire at grade 2. a director (junior/small department) of deputy director level. please note that the key directors in NUS (libraries, IT, etc) are almost a decade in their positions. hence promotions at these levels are very rare.
grade 6 on average gets less than 3.5k per mth. bearing in mind the traditional 13mth month is already factored in. increments and bonuses are much lower than civil service.
however some depts like med as in a slightly different scheme and with 13th mth. they are under purview of NUS Health System (includes dentistry).
in short, NUS or university admin are usually paid below market rate. but their quality of life is better than say civil service (more burearcratic) and private sector. if you are a female with no high ambition (and husband can complement towards household income with higher salary), stay in NUS as work life balance should be better. better still keep improving our birth rate.
i know cos i was in NUS admin and moved on to civil service. for money reasons. |
I left
NUS for private sector many years ago. Precisely because of below market pay.
NUS admin is a superbly least stress, work-life balance, postive, and low expense working environment. But for males who needs to have more ambition and money in the wallet for family expenses, one can't make this a career.
I provide some numbers. As some bros have mentioned,
NUS admin generally no 13mth (cos already incorporated in pay package), mid year bonus is also unheard of, and performance bonus is 1 -2 months lower than civil service. For a Grade 5 officer (Grade 1 being director of large dept and 6 being a fresh degree grad), you may be paid average of ($60k pa). The annual increment is miserable. After 5 years, you may be promoted to entry Grade 4 but your annual increment is less than $20k, bearing in mind you may be stuck in Grade 4 for around 10 years.
In the civil service (Grade 5 is equivalent to MX12), your pay package is at least $70k pa. If you get promoted to MX11 in 5 years, you will be near $100k pa. There is a good fighting chance of promotion to MX10 (SAD or jnr DD title) in subsequent 10 years where pa can be $150k. This is because the the max range for upper MX10 is $10,400.
Do your math and it's clear that on average the civil service pays better.
The exception is of course if you are a senior administration in
NUS. i.e. At least a Grade 3 (DD or senior assoc dir). p.a. is around 120-150k. Still not comparable to civil service but work load and stress is much lesser than equivalent position in civil service. But bear in mind that half of Grade 1-2 positions are held by academics, former academics or those with PhD. This can be verified in
NUS staff contact list.
As other bros have mentioned, there is lots of title inflation going on in
NUS. Partly due to splintering of a big dept/office into 2, and partly due to pressure of keeping pace with private sector norm (whoever came up with this ******** reason). A 'senior manager' in
NUS may look as young as a fresh grad and paid like one. And almost all 'senior managers' sardine up buses 95 or 96 to-fro from work everyday.