Targeting movement-building efforts at top universities’ administration and admissions
Effective altruism
Currently, the admissions officers of top (say, US) universities select and recruit high-potential students (modulo things like Harvard’s Z list), and EA thereby uses targeted efforts to persuade and facilitate these high-potential students to go into high-impact careers. Yet, most graduates of top universities still do not do so, and a significant proportion of them go into zero-sum or negative-sum careers due to sticky social norms.
One solution may be to target movement-building efforts for EA and longtermism at admissions officers of top universities. Specifically, persuade and facilitate admissions officers’ preference towards high-potential students who are likely to explicitly maximize for career impact compared to the status quo. A lot of these selected students would then be naturally interested in EA/longtermism.
A complementing solution would be to do the same for the universities’ administration, to prevent a conflict of interest or of strategy between the administration and the admissions office. A university administration receptive to longtermism could be extremely impactful in its own right, such as for movement-building longtermism among the university’s students/faculty and allocating resources to high-impact research and teaching.
Targeting movement-building efforts at top universities’ administration and admissions
Effective altruism
Currently, the admissions officers of top (say, US) universities select and recruit high-potential students (modulo things like Harvard’s Z list), and EA thereby uses targeted efforts to persuade and facilitate these high-potential students to go into high-impact careers. Yet, most graduates of top universities still do not do so, and a significant proportion of them go into zero-sum or negative-sum careers due to sticky social norms.
One solution may be to target movement-building efforts for EA and longtermism at admissions officers of top universities. Specifically, persuade and facilitate admissions officers’ preference towards high-potential students who are likely to explicitly maximize for career impact compared to the status quo. A lot of these selected students would then be naturally interested in EA/longtermism.
A complementing solution would be to do the same for the universities’ administration, to prevent a conflict of interest or of strategy between the administration and the admissions office. A university administration receptive to longtermism could be extremely impactful in its own right, such as for movement-building longtermism among the university’s students/faculty and allocating resources to high-impact research and teaching.