Pros
A large university that is almost always hiring for a wide variety of staff positions. As an entry-level or early career employee, it can be easy to rise quickly if you excel at your job, BUT this depends on your department management. In some instances there may be more opportunities for rapid growth than in corporate, since there frankly isn't much competition among lower-level staff (or upper management, for that matter). It's easy to find things that could be improved and implement procedures to improve them - but you may have to fight for recognition afterward. Outstanding benefits. Automatic 5% contribution towards retirement, plus the university will match your contribution up to an additional 5%. That means you can contribute 5% of your income to retirement and actually be saving 15% per year. 75-80% tuition benefit. The School of Continuing Studies has some good evening certificate and graduate programs for working professionals (though classes may be offered only in Evanston, or only in Chicago, at any given time). They are *trying* to be more progressive when it comes to staff, hosting networking and professional development events and the like.
Cons
Faculty can be downright rude and disrespectful; stay away from positions that deal with faculty if you can help it. I cannot emphasize this enough. They also have no idea how to be administrators or work with staff, and the learning curve is steep every time a faculty member takes on an administrative role. Somewhat rigid HR policies concerning raises and promotions, values years of experience over performance. Senior staff love them some bureaucracy. Getting any changes implemented takes forever. Very hierarchical management, I don't think they've ever heard of "moving towards a flatter organizational structure." No one ever loses their job, even people who EVERYONE knows would have been fired long ago in the private sector. This lowers morale. Staff are a weird mix of folks - some very professional, motivated and talented people, and then a lot of folks who are just like characters from "The Office" (think Dwight, Angela, and Creed types). There are some great individuals on the IT team, but the way the whole IT operation is run is insane. The individual school IT departments have WAY too much autonomy, creating huge disparities between schools when it comes to software upgrades, websites, etc.