top universities are the places with the highest concentrations of people who ultimately have a very large influence on the world
I think this as a piece of reasoning represents a major problem in the perceptions of EA. While it might be factually true, there are two problems with relying on it:
It means surrendering ourselves to this existing state as opposed to trying to change it and create a more equal world.
It means the goal of EA community building is regarded as a funnel trying to get individuals into existing positions determined by the system already in place. There is an alternative: building not a pool of individuals, each of which is separately regarded as a marginal talent contribution—but rather a diverse community that could think more robustly about how to change the world for better, and not be mostly confined to rich, white, technological, western perspectives. IMO this alternative is much more important than the funnel.
On the one hand, I am generally sympathetic to the broader concern.
On the other hand, a suggestion that EA should attempt to change certain deep-rooted truths about the way the world works to “create a more equal world” in addition to its object-level workloads wouldn’t score well with me. As a general matter, the development of non-elite American college students is not neglected or cost-effective, so it is not a viable object-level initiative. It’s only viable as a meta project to the extent that it indirectly contributes to object-level success.
I don’t think focusing CEA resources on elite universities is inherently inconsistent with your second point. Maybe I’m showing my age, but back when I was an undergraduate, most student organizations had access to funding through student government, but little in the way of external subsidy or support. Except for modest sums given to newspaper editors and such, students didn’t get paid for leadership. When trips/retreats were subsidized, the subsidies were partial and the trips were generally within a few hours’ driving distance and on a modest budget. In most cases, there were no external organizations helping student leadership out. (I recognize that this setup makes it more difficult for student of modest means. That was my experience as well—my family was low-income enough that even the school concluded my parents could contribute almost nothing to educational expenses.)
Although there was a shift toward concentrating resources on top universities, it seems from a glance at the UGAP program that the resources that are out there for non-top university EA groups still exceed what student groups generally get in the broader world. To be clear, I’m sure the pulling back of support for non-top university groups was difficult for their organizers who had previously received more support, and that the existence of more supported groups at top universities is discouraging for organizers elsewhere. But the existence of more recruiting-focused programs at top universities does not somehow makes EA inaccessible everywhere else. Thus, it is not inconsistent in my view with working toward “a diverse community that could think more robustly about how to change the world for better.”
A few years ago, I started an EA university group in Chile, got funding and support through UGAP, then got advising through 80k and continued mentoring through OSP. This year, I got hired at CEA’s Groups team.
It’s difficult to trace counterfactual impact, but I suspect this wouldn’t have been possible if UGAP hadn’t helped me get a group started, or if CEA wasn’t able to recognize good talent outside top universities.
I’m biased now, but I think people miss how most of our team’s efforts go to scalable support, which doesn’t necessarily target top universities (and includes universities like mine). Selecting top universities is a good heuristic for getting high-quality group members, but you also get diminishing returns fast because you’re bottlenecked by having great organizers at these universities who are in need of support. This, alongside the fact that there is such a thing as great groups outside of top universities, is why we still spend a lot of time, resources, and money on other universities worldwide.
I’m on the one hand happy to hear that the groups team isn’t as elite-focused as I had thought; on the other hand, I’m still troubled by the margin-based reasoning.
Treating each new person as a separate investment and trying to optimize for their marginal utility for EA, instead of looking at the aggregate effect on the movement of all the community building efforts.
Specifically in your comment, justifying diversifying investment in groups by saying “high quality group members” are the goal but top universities have bottlenecks which can’t be easily solved by just pouring more money into them—instead of arguing that it’s better to have a new group in Chile than a new group in Harvard, even if hypothetically people there were less qualified for existing EA jobs.
I’m biased now, but I think people miss how most of our team’s efforts go to scalable support, which doesn’t necessarily target top universities (and includes universities like mine).
Is the portion of efforts that currently do not go to top universities quantifiable, or at least subject to reasonable estimation? I would guess that people who were adversely affected by changes would be more vocal, which could lead to others overestimating the magnitude of those changes on non-top university support.
I think this as a piece of reasoning represents a major problem in the perceptions of EA. While it might be factually true, there are two problems with relying on it:
It means surrendering ourselves to this existing state as opposed to trying to change it and create a more equal world.
It means the goal of EA community building is regarded as a funnel trying to get individuals into existing positions determined by the system already in place. There is an alternative: building not a pool of individuals, each of which is separately regarded as a marginal talent contribution—but rather a diverse community that could think more robustly about how to change the world for better, and not be mostly confined to rich, white, technological, western perspectives. IMO this alternative is much more important than the funnel.
On the one hand, I am generally sympathetic to the broader concern.
On the other hand, a suggestion that EA should attempt to change certain deep-rooted truths about the way the world works to “create a more equal world” in addition to its object-level workloads wouldn’t score well with me. As a general matter, the development of non-elite American college students is not neglected or cost-effective, so it is not a viable object-level initiative. It’s only viable as a meta project to the extent that it indirectly contributes to object-level success.
I don’t think focusing CEA resources on elite universities is inherently inconsistent with your second point. Maybe I’m showing my age, but back when I was an undergraduate, most student organizations had access to funding through student government, but little in the way of external subsidy or support. Except for modest sums given to newspaper editors and such, students didn’t get paid for leadership. When trips/retreats were subsidized, the subsidies were partial and the trips were generally within a few hours’ driving distance and on a modest budget. In most cases, there were no external organizations helping student leadership out. (I recognize that this setup makes it more difficult for student of modest means. That was my experience as well—my family was low-income enough that even the school concluded my parents could contribute almost nothing to educational expenses.)
Although there was a shift toward concentrating resources on top universities, it seems from a glance at the UGAP program that the resources that are out there for non-top university EA groups still exceed what student groups generally get in the broader world. To be clear, I’m sure the pulling back of support for non-top university groups was difficult for their organizers who had previously received more support, and that the existence of more supported groups at top universities is discouraging for organizers elsewhere. But the existence of more recruiting-focused programs at top universities does not somehow makes EA inaccessible everywhere else. Thus, it is not inconsistent in my view with working toward “a diverse community that could think more robustly about how to change the world for better.”
A few years ago, I started an EA university group in Chile, got funding and support through UGAP, then got advising through 80k and continued mentoring through OSP. This year, I got hired at CEA’s Groups team.
It’s difficult to trace counterfactual impact, but I suspect this wouldn’t have been possible if UGAP hadn’t helped me get a group started, or if CEA wasn’t able to recognize good talent outside top universities.
I’m biased now, but I think people miss how most of our team’s efforts go to scalable support, which doesn’t necessarily target top universities (and includes universities like mine). Selecting top universities is a good heuristic for getting high-quality group members, but you also get diminishing returns fast because you’re bottlenecked by having great organizers at these universities who are in need of support. This, alongside the fact that there is such a thing as great groups outside of top universities, is why we still spend a lot of time, resources, and money on other universities worldwide.
I’m on the one hand happy to hear that the groups team isn’t as elite-focused as I had thought; on the other hand, I’m still troubled by the margin-based reasoning.
Could you clarify what you mean by margin-based reasoning in this context?
Treating each new person as a separate investment and trying to optimize for their marginal utility for EA, instead of looking at the aggregate effect on the movement of all the community building efforts.
Specifically in your comment, justifying diversifying investment in groups by saying “high quality group members” are the goal but top universities have bottlenecks which can’t be easily solved by just pouring more money into them—instead of arguing that it’s better to have a new group in Chile than a new group in Harvard, even if hypothetically people there were less qualified for existing EA jobs.
Is the portion of efforts that currently do not go to top universities quantifiable, or at least subject to reasonable estimation? I would guess that people who were adversely affected by changes would be more vocal, which could lead to others overestimating the magnitude of those changes on non-top university support.
I love this point and expect I’ll want to link to it in the future; can I suggest putting it on your shortform to make it more accessible?
Thanks, I’ve never used shortform but I’ll try tomorrow