I was thinking about this problem and I realized that there are a lot of college students on Felicifia, so it could be helpful to bring it here.

I have some flexibility about how many courses I take. I could take a moderate workload and a light job (~10 hours a week), or I could take a heavy workload and no job. If I do get a job, I could donate the money I earn; but it could be more lucrative in the long term to take more courses. What does Felicifia think?

Choice of useful courses is far more important than quantity.

If the increase in pay from going to college is more than the decrease in present value from it being further in the future, it would be worth while for you to take more classes now. If not, it would be worth while to put off college indefinitely, and you're wasting your time going there.

In short, take more classes.

Hedonic Treader wrote:Choice of useful courses is far more important than quantity.

That's true, but there are more useful courses than can be taken in four years, so taking more courses should still have high returns.

The problem is not as simple as other commenters here make it sound to me, I think. For example, it could be worthwhile with regard to the goals of utilitarianism to go to college, but still more worthwhile to take a moderate workload and earn money via a job.

Essentially, you have to weigh how attractive a candidate you think the heavier workload would make you -- could you handle it? would it get you a better job? higher salary overall? would it train you to be more effective in other ways? course selection definitely matters here more than course quantity! -- against the benefits of taking the job -- what would the money you make immediately do? how much do you weigh donations now versus donations later? could the job give you experience needed to résumé boost and still get the better job when you graduate? etc.

For me, that came out in favor of trying to work as much as I possibly can, which is the Denison maximum of 10hrs/wk, while still maintaining a larger than average courseload and some key extracurriculars. For you and your chosen career path, it might be different.

I am currently visiting effective altruist (EA) organisations in series in order to learn enough to know whether to be a professional philanthropist or a more direct sort of contributor.

I recommend that it would have been impossible for me to be sufficiently sure of the relative impact of EA organisations ranging from Singularity Institute to the Future of Humanity Institute or Giving What We Can without visiting them. I am still radically uncertain about this, and I guess their impact probably varies by a factor of 10-100. It seems like the best thing to do is to locate oneself within some or all of these organisations, at least for one year in order to gain a better impression of the landscape. It would have been impossible for me to make a good decision without at least this brief (7-week) visit.

I suggest that study can wait.

DanielLC wrote:If the increase in pay from going to college is more than the decrease in present value from it being further in the future, it would be worth while for you to take more classes now. If not, it would be worth while to put off college indefinitely, and you're wasting your time going there.

My opinion is that, at least for earning-to-give careers, going to college is worthwhile, but the material you learn in college is not instrumentally valuable (even if it's definitely fun!). In other words, the value of college is mostly from signaling and just a little from what you actually learn. So it's not inconsistent to go to college yet not take a heavy workload.

That said, I think the best alternative may not be a low-paying job but instead volunteering (say, with EAA or our new wild-animal-suffering charity) or doing more independent utilitarian work, like promoting your blog posts on antispeciesism to more people, talking with friends to get them interested in these issues, collaborating with academics on animal-suffering research, or whatever else you think is useful.

I should add that if you're aiming for a super-competitive field, it might be worth spending more time on whatever will most advance that purpose -- maybe academics, but maybe also leading a club or sports team, doing interview prep, applying to good internships, networking with people in the field, etc.

RyanCarey wrote:It seems like the best thing to do is to locate oneself within some or all of these organisations, at least for one year in order to gain a better impression of the landscape.

I like that idea. Visiting groups has definitely changed my perceptions in the past. One thing you learn is how much energy the employees have for what they're working on vs. how much time they spend goofing off.

The places where I plan to donate next year are EAA and our new wild-animal organization, both of which I'm deeply involved with or even supervising, so I'm confident in my knowledge of these organizations.

In other words, the value of college is mostly from signaling and just a little from what you actually learn.

The value is from college. The intermediate steps are irrelevant. The opportunity cost of taking longer to finish college is the same whether you're getting payed more because you know more or you're just signalling.

Good point, DanielLC. If graduating in 3 years instead of 4 is an option, then what you say makes sense. However, the difference in years that you spend in college is discrete, so if you miss the mark on graduating in 3 years (or maybe in 7 semesters instead of 8, if that's allowed), then additional workload doesn't save you time. Also, your point doesn't apply with regard to additional workload in the sense of taking harder classes or more classes that don't contribute toward graduating.