We've got a similar problem at my (much smaller) school. I've found that most colleges treat IT as an unfortunate evil, which is reflected in the quality of services they provide. It's strange how these colleges think they can train us for the future while ignoring the massive changes technology brings us.
I used to work for a company that provided IT systems to about half the colleges in America. Your characterization is actually very shallow compared to the reality.
The reality is campuses are some of the most annoying places in the world to try to get IT stuff done. Each department is a fiefdom that thinks they are the most important people in the world. Each fiefdom expects the campus IT group to only care about them, and all technology decisions are made by committees consisting of those people. This is further exasperated by most professors and administrators having a massive fear of change and just wanting to teach like they've been teaching and research like they've been researching for 30 years. Imagine the English department having serious weigh-in on technology topics.
As far as the talent of the workers, in my experience you have a group that is worth every below-industry-standard penny they (don't) earn, who are hoping to not be noticed. But you also have many amazing, talented, extremely dedicated people who could be earning much, much more, but believe in the mission, so sacrifice pay to help support it.
