Vantaggi
If you are an office of the University, your children get free tuition. If you are unmotivated or don't want to work hard, CU employees can slip through the cracks for years without anyone knowing or doing something about it. Without pressure to drive revenue, the mission is is loftier. The benefits are good: officers receive about 20 vacation days plus 3 personal days. In addition, the CU not only matches employee contributions to its non-profit version of a 401k, it also gives 5% of your salary even if you contribute nothing, and that money vests immediately. In terms of work and life balance, it probably varies from department to department, but for the most part my sense is that it's an incredibly flexible place.
Svantaggi
The pay is low relative to similar functional roles at for-profit companies. The only people who make average (or even way above average) salaries are those in senior management. For the 401K, the university has a good matching plan but make sure to try to enter as an office at grade 14 or above - the University won't match employee contributions for two years for officers at grade 13 or below. Also, this is not the right environment for a motivated, ambitious person. It's filled with cronyism and incompetence at many levels throughout the organization. And this can lead to very low morale among the rank and file.