Thank you for the post and for clarifying the current situation.
I have mixed feelings about the results of the upcoming changes, particularly about stopping funding for part-time group organizers, as I feel this may lead to excluding many students from engaging in organizing groups. This particularly applies to:
students with a difficult financial situation
students who must cover high costs of living (e.g. due to living in an expensive city or region)
students who must pay their university fees or pay back their student loan
I myself am a group organizer to whom none of the above applies, and still one of my main worries about setting up a university EA group was that I would have to start working at some point to cover my costs of living (combining studies, work and organizing a group does not seem possible). In fact, this scenario seemed more likely to happen than not. Thankfully, I received a grant from Open Philantropy to work on the group part-time and this was a game changer. This was the single most important thing that allowed me to set up the group and focus on it fully, which is critical, as I am the only organizer.
I am afraid that not providing funding may stop many students from setting up new groups, lower the capacity of current group organizers and even lead to some groups ceasing to exist. Furthermore, leading a group may essencially become an exclusive activity, available only to financially privileged students.
Having said that, I appreciate the transparency of both your, and Open Phil’s post about the changes. Thank you for sharing that!
I would be interested to see what proportion of group organizer request funding primarily due to difficult financial situations. My guess would be that this number is fairly small, but I could be wrong.
The bar should not be at ‘difficult financial situation’, and this is also something there are often incentives against explicitly mentioning when applying for funding. Getting paid employment while studying (even fulltime degrees) is normal.
My 5 minute Google search to put some numbers on this:
Why are students taking on paid work?
UK: “Three-quarters of those in work said they did so to meet their living costs, while 23% also said they worked to give financial support for friends or family.” From the Guardian article linked above.
Cannot find a recent US statistic quickly, but given the system (e.g. https://www.collegeave.com/articles/how-to-pay-for-college/) I expect working rather than taking out (as much in) loans is a big one.
On the other hand, spending time on committees is also very normal as an undergraduate and those are not paid. However in comparison the time people spend on this is much more limited (say ~2-5 hrs/week), there is rarely a single organiser, and I’ve seen a lot of people drop off committees—some as they are less keen, but some for time commitment reasons (which I expect will sometimes/often be doing paid work).
Hi Weronika, thank you for sharing your story and reflections so openly! I basically think you are right in there probably being organizers for whom the stipends are the difference between organizing their EA group and not doing so, and I really want to make sure we take this point into account as my team dives into considerations around part-time stipends in the new year. As @satpathyakash notes, I think an imporant question here is the scale, and I hope to make some progress on this point!
I also wanted to flag explicitly that we are tracking the diversity concern you note.
I expect that as part of our research in the new year, we’ll set up various ways of asking stakeholders, including current, former, and potential organizers, for input. I would be keen to include you in this process, if you’re happy to keep sharing your thoughts! And as always: thanks for organizing your group :)
Thank you for the post and for clarifying the current situation.
I have mixed feelings about the results of the upcoming changes, particularly about stopping funding for part-time group organizers, as I feel this may lead to excluding many students from engaging in organizing groups. This particularly applies to:
students with a difficult financial situation
students who must cover high costs of living (e.g. due to living in an expensive city or region)
students who must pay their university fees or pay back their student loan
I myself am a group organizer to whom none of the above applies, and still one of my main worries about setting up a university EA group was that I would have to start working at some point to cover my costs of living (combining studies, work and organizing a group does not seem possible). In fact, this scenario seemed more likely to happen than not. Thankfully, I received a grant from Open Philantropy to work on the group part-time and this was a game changer. This was the single most important thing that allowed me to set up the group and focus on it fully, which is critical, as I am the only organizer.
I am afraid that not providing funding may stop many students from setting up new groups, lower the capacity of current group organizers and even lead to some groups ceasing to exist. Furthermore, leading a group may essencially become an exclusive activity, available only to financially privileged students.
Having said that, I appreciate the transparency of both your, and Open Phil’s post about the changes. Thank you for sharing that!
I would be interested to see what proportion of group organizer request funding primarily due to difficult financial situations. My guess would be that this number is fairly small, but I could be wrong.
The bar should not be at ‘difficult financial situation’, and this is also something there are often incentives against explicitly mentioning when applying for funding. Getting paid employment while studying (even fulltime degrees) is normal.
My 5 minute Google search to put some numbers on this:
Proportion of students who are employed while studying: UK: survey of 10,000 students showed that 56% of full-time UK undergraduates had paid employment (14.5 hours/week average) - June 2024 Guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/jun/13/more-than-half-of-uk-students-working-long-hours-in-paid-jobs USA: 43% of full-time students work while enrolled in college—January 2023 Fortune article https://fortune.com/2023/01/11/college-students-with-jobs-20-percent-less-likely-to-graduate-than-privileged-peers-study-side-hustle/
Why are students taking on paid work? UK: “Three-quarters of those in work said they did so to meet their living costs, while 23% also said they worked to give financial support for friends or family.” From the Guardian article linked above. Cannot find a recent US statistic quickly, but given the system (e.g. https://www.collegeave.com/articles/how-to-pay-for-college/) I expect working rather than taking out (as much in) loans is a big one.
On the other hand, spending time on committees is also very normal as an undergraduate and those are not paid. However in comparison the time people spend on this is much more limited (say ~2-5 hrs/week), there is rarely a single organiser, and I’ve seen a lot of people drop off committees—some as they are less keen, but some for time commitment reasons (which I expect will sometimes/often be doing paid work).
Hi Weronika, thank you for sharing your story and reflections so openly! I basically think you are right in there probably being organizers for whom the stipends are the difference between organizing their EA group and not doing so, and I really want to make sure we take this point into account as my team dives into considerations around part-time stipends in the new year. As @satpathyakash notes, I think an imporant question here is the scale, and I hope to make some progress on this point!
I also wanted to flag explicitly that we are tracking the diversity concern you note.
I expect that as part of our research in the new year, we’ll set up various ways of asking stakeholders, including current, former, and potential organizers, for input. I would be keen to include you in this process, if you’re happy to keep sharing your thoughts! And as always: thanks for organizing your group :)