I lead CEA’s University Groups team. We often post updates on the Forum about what we’re up to, and are always happy to answer questions!
I helped start & ran Positive Impact Society Erasmus (PISE) in 2020-2022, and was co-lead for EAGxRotterdam 2022. I’m happy to answer any questions about those experiences!
Hey, I’m Joris and I currently run CEA’s University Groups Team. I just wanted to share some more personal thoughts on this topic. My thoughts do not represent CEA’s official position and are also a bit messy, but I wanted to share them to be transparent and maybe provide some insight into how I am thinking about things.
First, I just wanted to flag that the team and I are aware of the many discussions on the topic of ‘top’ or ‘focus’ universities that have happened on the Forum. Many of our internal conversations touch upon many of the arguments raised there
I think it’s important to keep in mind that most talented people that we’d want to contribute to the EA mission are just not at these few institutions
Zooming out, I believe that most talented, altruistic and driven people in the world might just never even get a chance to act on those motivations due to large systemic issues like poverty, lack of education, or just a sheer dearth of opportunities to do good on a large scale more generally.
I think a lot of EA initiatives try to address these problems, but I don’t think it’s where our team should try to make a dent in the world (at least not directly).
On a more actionable note, however, it does feel like there is a subsection of the world’s population that we can reach with EA ideas, and we should make sure to prioritize well between all of those possible audiences. I think it’s now the right call to spend some of our marginal efforts on improving EA groups at these ‘top’ universities:
Now that our scalable support feels firmly in place and reaches hundreds of organizers around the world, I feel better about focusing more of our efforts on the pilot universities. This, together with our focus on ‘what things from our pilot program can we scale to other groups?’, makes things feel different from past work with ‘top’ universities
For context: the University Groups Team currently consists of Alex, Jemima, Joris, ~0.5 of Sam (he’s still studying), and our assistants Anto and Igna. I’d estimate that from May till now, about 20% of our combined time has been spent on mentorship and other support for the pilot uni program, while at least 30% of our time is spent on broad support programming
Personally, I’m excited to be focusing more of my time on our scalable support once we have onboarded someone for the pilot university role!
In general, I often notice myself thinking that I feel sad to live in a world where a small fraction of the population has such outsized opportunities to shape the world. But people in certain positions do have outsized resources to impact the world, and if we get a chance to inspire these
people with EA ideas and motivate them to act on them, we should. I’m excited to find someone who can work with us on making the most of this large opportunity for impact, and hope people apply for the role!
Many semesters are about to kick off in the next ~month, meaning the busiest and most important time of the year is coming up for many EA university group organizers.
I’m very grateful for the work of university group organizers around the world. University groups have been a place where so many people learned about EA ideas and met others who are equally motivated to do good in an impartial and scope-sensitive way. Many of the people who got involved with EA through university groups are now making progress on fighting very difficult problems in the world. Thank you to everyone who was and is making that possible by helping run a university group!
If you know a university group organizer, please consider sending them a message to wish them all the best with promoting EA ideas this month and beyond!
Congrats on the remodelling, it looks great!
Wanted to flag that you can select multiple answers for every question in the survey, not sure if you meant that to be the case?
Are there any resources that inform your views on biodiversity that you’d recommend others read? I’d be curious to learn more!
I remember someone giving a talk on the topic at EAGxCambridge but I couldn’t quickly find who this was unfortunately
A few months ago, @Naomi N and I collected this overview of all post-FTX reflection-related projects we were aware of at the time—you and others might find that helpful!
Hey Tom, welcome to the Forum!
I happened to see this comment, excited to get in touch! And thanks for the recommendation James :)
Want to shoot us an email at unigroups [at] centreforeffectivealtruism [dot] org? I’ve already asked someone to do a search in our system for any people in your area!
Just sending a quick reply—you might find this interesting!
Thanks both! This is so nice to hear!
Thanks for the question Jason! I’ll try to see if we can share more info here
As a quick reply, I think (in rough order) our largest budget items are staff costs and group support funding. Next would be costs associated with retreats, our internship and then reimbursements for mentors in OSP.