Co-founder and executive director at Oxford Biosecurity Group
Creator of the ‘Introduction to Biosecurity’ course. Put together a 1-pager of resources to help people get started in biosecurity.
All opinions I post on the forum are my own. Tell me why I’m wrong.
Glad this exists, thanks for creating it!
Great post, it’s inspired one of my own! Here for anyone interested: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ckbLRboAffQw4Qjpf/brief-career-musings-programmes-resource-creation-and-flow
I’ve unfortunately not had the chance to look at the longer 45 minute version yet though, so can’t comment on that.
Interesting quick take, thanks for sharing!
It’s unfortunate that more senior professionals are having this experience, particularly as experience and expertise are so important for tackling big issues.
“Other services and brands are probably now better suited to cater to this need than EA.” Do you have examples of these?
I would also recommend the Pandemic Action Network newsletter—sign up here.
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).
Update: now Resilience Action Playbook, sign up here.