Iâm glad you posted this! Itâs an interesting idea, and the kind of thing that deserves to be discussed, because thereâs a lot to be learned from different proposals for âEA educationâ.
Where I agree with you: I think itâs true that many people are out there somewhere in the world who agree with the general principles of EA (even if they donât know what it is yet) and could be shifted onto a high-impact career path with the right nudge.
The question is: How can we find these people, and whatâs the right nudge?
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I donât think something like an academy would be impossible to run, but it would be very difficult.
Before I lay out more detail, Iâll try to sum up my main concern in one sentence: âItâs really hard to teach people to do the kinds of EA work that are most in-demand.â
If you look at the 80,000 Hours job board, youâll find that most of the highest-impact jobs they know about require a pretty specific background and/âor set of skillsâmore than can be obtained in a few months. If we have money and time to spend on the education of people who want to make an impact, my best guess is that trying to help them obtain the requisite background/âskills directly will be better than teaching EA principles and concepts more generally.
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Some other points related to risk and difficulty:
Even at schools focused on a simple and easily marketable skillset (programming), many students drop out of the program or graduate and still canât find a job.
Lambda may be an exception, but for every exception, there is a rule, and the rule of âprogramming bootcampsâ seems to be that many things can go wrong on the road from novice to professional.
Some of the most valuable âskillsâ for EA organizations are either not teachable (policy experience) or are very difficult to teach (research, general execution skills).
My impression is that the most successful research organizations try to avoid teaching research skills by filtering heavily on that skill ahead of time, even though this greatly increases their hiring costs.
If Open Phil had a way to generate five new Research Analysts to work for two years each using, say, $500,000 and six total months of staff time (âtwo instructorsâ), I strongly suspect that they would do so. The fact that they donât do this makes me think that teaching EA research is probably hard (though I donât work at Open Phil, and this is speculative).
The two instructors will be hard to find.
Theyâll need to have a very strong grasp on EA concepts, be reasonably good at teaching, be reasonably good at curriculum-writing (unless thatâs a job for a third talented person with spare time), and not be working on something with higher EV.
The students will be hard to find.
If people apply from within the EA community, they probably know quite a bit of the material already and donât need the ânudgeâ (instead, they might be better served joining a school like Lambda, doing a research internship, or something else more skill-building for their specific goals).
If people apply from elsewhere, and have valuable skills, is it better for them to enter an âacademyâ than to work with 80,000 Hours?
This seems like a bad deal for anyone who plans to enter the private sector, since it charges a lot of money and doesnât teach any âmarketableâ skills.
As something like a college course, it might hold appeal for people who like learning for its own sake. But I think most people who would be good candidates for the class are also likely to be capable of learning the material through some combination of reading, participating in discussion online, traveling to an event or two, and maybe Skyping with more experienced people once in a while. (We donât have an easy way to set up Skype calls like that right now, but building one would be a lot easier than building an academy.)
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This is me trying to play Devilâs advocate, so I apologize if I sound harsh! There are certainly positive aspects to the plan: Itâs possible that finding good students would be easier than I envision, and if the program only succeeded half the time, that would still be a good outcome.
Questions I think youâll want to answer going forward: How did current employees of EA organizations (or people running independent projects) get to their positions? If they could go back to the end of college (for example) and try to teach themselves to do their own jobs in a few months, how far would they get? What would they try to teach themselves? How do those answers map onto what you think an âEA Academyâ should teach?
I was going to raise some similar objections, but you did it better. :) The only extra point I would raise is that my worst fear with project isnât it being a waste of resourcesâmy worst fear would be that it leads to significantly worse group-think as the âbest and brightestâ absorb the âright answersâ from one or two teachers.
Thanks Aaron, I appreciate your feedback! You point out a lot of potential issues I did not consider. Given those issues and the existing opportunities like the EA Hotel and the collegiate EA Fellowship programs, I think an EA Academy may not be the best option to try right now.
Iâm glad you posted this! Itâs an interesting idea, and the kind of thing that deserves to be discussed, because thereâs a lot to be learned from different proposals for âEA educationâ.
Projects you might find valuable to look up, because they had/âhave certain features in common with your idea: Students for High-Impact Charity, collegiate EA Fellowship programs, and the EA Hotel.
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Where I agree with you: I think itâs true that many people are out there somewhere in the world who agree with the general principles of EA (even if they donât know what it is yet) and could be shifted onto a high-impact career path with the right nudge.
The question is: How can we find these people, and whatâs the right nudge?
--
I donât think something like an academy would be impossible to run, but it would be very difficult.
Before I lay out more detail, Iâll try to sum up my main concern in one sentence: âItâs really hard to teach people to do the kinds of EA work that are most in-demand.â
If you look at the 80,000 Hours job board, youâll find that most of the highest-impact jobs they know about require a pretty specific background and/âor set of skillsâmore than can be obtained in a few months. If we have money and time to spend on the education of people who want to make an impact, my best guess is that trying to help them obtain the requisite background/âskills directly will be better than teaching EA principles and concepts more generally.
--
Some other points related to risk and difficulty:
Even at schools focused on a simple and easily marketable skillset (programming), many students drop out of the program or graduate and still canât find a job.
Lambda may be an exception, but for every exception, there is a rule, and the rule of âprogramming bootcampsâ seems to be that many things can go wrong on the road from novice to professional.
Some of the most valuable âskillsâ for EA organizations are either not teachable (policy experience) or are very difficult to teach (research, general execution skills).
My impression is that the most successful research organizations try to avoid teaching research skills by filtering heavily on that skill ahead of time, even though this greatly increases their hiring costs.
If Open Phil had a way to generate five new Research Analysts to work for two years each using, say, $500,000 and six total months of staff time (âtwo instructorsâ), I strongly suspect that they would do so. The fact that they donât do this makes me think that teaching EA research is probably hard (though I donât work at Open Phil, and this is speculative).
The two instructors will be hard to find.
Theyâll need to have a very strong grasp on EA concepts, be reasonably good at teaching, be reasonably good at curriculum-writing (unless thatâs a job for a third talented person with spare time), and not be working on something with higher EV.
The students will be hard to find.
If people apply from within the EA community, they probably know quite a bit of the material already and donât need the ânudgeâ (instead, they might be better served joining a school like Lambda, doing a research internship, or something else more skill-building for their specific goals).
If people apply from elsewhere, and have valuable skills, is it better for them to enter an âacademyâ than to work with 80,000 Hours?
This seems like a bad deal for anyone who plans to enter the private sector, since it charges a lot of money and doesnât teach any âmarketableâ skills.
As something like a college course, it might hold appeal for people who like learning for its own sake. But I think most people who would be good candidates for the class are also likely to be capable of learning the material through some combination of reading, participating in discussion online, traveling to an event or two, and maybe Skyping with more experienced people once in a while. (We donât have an easy way to set up Skype calls like that right now, but building one would be a lot easier than building an academy.)
--
This is me trying to play Devilâs advocate, so I apologize if I sound harsh! There are certainly positive aspects to the plan: Itâs possible that finding good students would be easier than I envision, and if the program only succeeded half the time, that would still be a good outcome.
Questions I think youâll want to answer going forward: How did current employees of EA organizations (or people running independent projects) get to their positions? If they could go back to the end of college (for example) and try to teach themselves to do their own jobs in a few months, how far would they get? What would they try to teach themselves? How do those answers map onto what you think an âEA Academyâ should teach?
I was going to raise some similar objections, but you did it better. :) The only extra point I would raise is that my worst fear with project isnât it being a waste of resourcesâmy worst fear would be that it leads to significantly worse group-think as the âbest and brightestâ absorb the âright answersâ from one or two teachers.
Or, frankly, that it would make EA seem even more like a cult than it already does.
The EA Hotel hosted an EA Retreat which sounds a bit similar. Hereâs a report from a Czech EA retreat.
Thanks Aaron, I appreciate your feedback! You point out a lot of potential issues I did not consider. Given those issues and the existing opportunities like the EA Hotel and the collegiate EA Fellowship programs, I think an EA Academy may not be the best option to try right now.