Blog #7: Theoretical Frame

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 Meritocracy in Higher Education


Meritocracy is a social system where advancement in society is based on one’s abilities and merits rather than on the basis of family, wealth, or social background. It has allowed people from low status groups to dream of improving their social status, economic class, and place in the social hierarchy. The impression is that everyone, no matter what their background is, can succeed if they develop the necessary merits. People want to believe they live in a ‘fair’ society where hard work can achieve anything regardless of their social position at birth. However, in reality, higher education has become a powerful means for reproducing class and privilege. College, has stopped to function as an engine of social mobility…

Joseph F. Kett, James Madison Professor of History at the University of Virginia, argues that there are at least two strikingly different ways in which merit has been understood in American history. 

  1. “Essential Merit”: merit that rests on specific and visible individual achievements that in turn reflect an estimable character, quite apart from the individual’s social rank. 
  1. “Institutional Merit”: this form of merit is not concerned with “essential character” but with the acquisition of specialized knowledge—knowledge that could be taught in schools, tested in written examinations, and certified by expert-staffed credentialing bodies.

Today, we see “institutional merit” in college admissions process in which testability and measurability of merit are of key importance. Colleges use standardized and quantitative evaluation (SAT and ACT etc.) to sort out and rank the capacities of otherwise unranked and undifferentiated individuals. Moreover, the losers of the meritocratic race had been systematically deprived of any plausible excuse for their failures. They are forced to see themselves as blameworthy and responsible for their failures. On the other hand, the winners are easily drawn to the conviction that their success is their own doing, hence, they deserve to be rewarded. They forget the luck and fortune that helped them and lose sympathy towards the underserved losers. 



Works Cited
McClay, Wilfred M. “Higher Ed’s Dysfunctional Devotion to Meritocracy.” Chronicle of Higher Education, vol. 64, no. 15, 8 Dec. 2017, p. 8. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=127245496&site=ehost-live.

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