I think it’s fair enough to caution against purely performative frugality. But I’m not sure the OP even justifies the suggestion that the organizers actually are more cost effective (they concluded the difference between paid and unpaid organizers’ individual contributions were “substantive, not enormous”; there’s a difference between paid people doing more work than volunteers and it being more cost effective to pay...). That’s even more the case if you take into account that the primary role of an effective university organizer is attracting more people (or “low context observers”) to become more altruistic and this instance of the “weirdness” argument is essentially that paying students undercut the group’s ability to appeal to people on altruistic grounds, even if individual paid staff put in more effort. And they were unusually well paid by campus standards for tasks almost every other student society use volunteers for.[1] And that there’s no evidence that the other ways CEA proposes spending the money instead are less effective.
one area we might agree is that I’m not sure if OpenPhil considered alternatives like making stipends needs-based or just a bit lower and more focused as a pragmatic alternative to just cancelling them altogether.
Note that the currently quoted pay for part-time organizers is somewhat lower than the linked comment, which quoted a then-current version of the OP website.
Current version reads:
Part-time/student organizers
Undergraduates organizing part-time typically receive a stipend that generally equates to $21-27/hr in the US and £15-19/hr in the UK.
Non-undergraduates organizing part-time typically receive a stipend that generally equates to $25-32/hr in the US and £18-23/hr in the UK.
I agree that this is an inference. I currently think the OP thinks that in the absence of frugality concerns this would be among the most cost-effective uses of money by Open Phil’s standards, but I might be wrong.
University group funding was historically considered extremely cost-effective when I talked to OP staff (beating out most other grants by a substantial margin). Possibly there was a big update here on cost-effectiveness excluding frugality-reputation concerns, but currently think there hasn’t been (but like, would update if someone from OP said otherwise, and then I would be interested in talking about that).
They do specifically say that they consider other types of university funding to have greater cost-benefit (and I don’t think it makes sense to exclude reputation concerns from cost-benefit analysis, particularly when reputation boost is a large part of the benefit being paid for in the first place). Presumably not paying stipends would leave more to go around. I agree that more detail would be welcome.
I agree that all-things-considered they say that, but I am objecting to “one of the things to consider”, and so IMO it makes sense to bracket that consideration when evaluating my claims here.
I think it’s fair enough to caution against purely performative frugality. But I’m not sure the OP even justifies the suggestion that the organizers actually are more cost effective (they concluded the difference between paid and unpaid organizers’ individual contributions were “substantive, not enormous”; there’s a difference between paid people doing more work than volunteers and it being more cost effective to pay...). That’s even more the case if you take into account that the primary role of an effective university organizer is attracting more people (or “low context observers”) to become more altruistic and this instance of the “weirdness” argument is essentially that paying students undercut the group’s ability to appeal to people on altruistic grounds, even if individual paid staff put in more effort. And they were unusually well paid by campus standards for tasks almost every other student society use volunteers for.[1] And that there’s no evidence that the other ways CEA proposes spending the money instead are less effective.
one area we might agree is that I’m not sure if OpenPhil considered alternatives like making stipends needs-based or just a bit lower and more focused as a pragmatic alternative to just cancelling them altogether.
Note that the currently quoted pay for part-time organizers is somewhat lower than the linked comment, which quoted a then-current version of the OP website.
Current version reads:
Part-time/student organizers
Undergraduates organizing part-time typically receive a stipend that generally equates to $21-27/hr in the US and £15-19/hr in the UK. Non-undergraduates organizing part-time typically receive a stipend that generally equates to $25-32/hr in the US and £18-23/hr in the UK.
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/open-philanthropy-university-organizer-fellowship/
I agree that this is an inference. I currently think the OP thinks that in the absence of frugality concerns this would be among the most cost-effective uses of money by Open Phil’s standards, but I might be wrong.
University group funding was historically considered extremely cost-effective when I talked to OP staff (beating out most other grants by a substantial margin). Possibly there was a big update here on cost-effectiveness excluding frugality-reputation concerns, but currently think there hasn’t been (but like, would update if someone from OP said otherwise, and then I would be interested in talking about that).
They do specifically say that they consider other types of university funding to have greater cost-benefit (and I don’t think it makes sense to exclude reputation concerns from cost-benefit analysis, particularly when reputation boost is a large part of the benefit being paid for in the first place). Presumably not paying stipends would leave more to go around. I agree that more detail would be welcome.
I agree that all-things-considered they say that, but I am objecting to “one of the things to consider”, and so IMO it makes sense to bracket that consideration when evaluating my claims here.