Too much merit or not enough?

No one admires unearned advancement. Luck may give some people unique talents, but even Mozart had to practise. Such hard work deserves reward.

Michael Young was a British sociologist, but he was no armchair academic. He not only devoted his life to studying society but also to ‘improving’ it. He aimed to replace Britain’s class-ridden social order with a “Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain — free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people.”

Of the various means to a better society, Young viewed education as the most significant. By creating the Open University, he gave all Britons, whatever their background, the opportunity to start their upwardly mobile journey. Young was proud of his new university. He believed everyone deserved a chance to move up in the world; family ties, wealth, class, race, and religion should never be barriers to advancement. Motivation, ability, and drive are what counts.

Young was the first person to use the word ‘meritocracy’ in print, but it quickly entered the vocabulary of politicians. Singapore's first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, proudly described his country as a “meritocracy, where people rise by their own merit, hard work, and performance.” Former British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair called the creation of a meritocracy an “indispensable part of building a decent and prosperous society.” Theresa May, a former Tory British prime minister, wanted “Britain to be the world’s greatest meritocracy.” In Australia, former Prime Minister Robert Menzies greatly expanded higher education and expressed similar sentiments.

Despite this widespread praise, Young harboured qualms about how a merit-based society might evolve.   He expressed his misgivings in a novel titled The Rise of the Meritocracy. Young set his story in 2034, when wealth and power are no longer inherited or shared among cronies. Merit is the sole driver of social advancement. The country has a ruling class, but it is “not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent” [emphasis added].

Surprisingly, The Rise of the Meritocracy was not a description of an egalitarian utopia but a stark look at a dark dystopia. In Young’s novel, prestige, power, and wealth accrued to the naturally talented who married one another. They used their influence “to gain unfair advantages for their offspring.” The resulting meritocracy became a self-perpetuating dynasty. By 2034, society had split into two groups: “the eminent [who] know that success is a just reward for their own capacity, their own efforts,” and a lower class taught to think of themselves as failures.”

Young came to view a merit-based society as no improvement over the old world of inherited wealth and power; both led to a fractured society. A poll of attitudes toward merit-based university admissions conducted by the Pew Research Centre think tank found that few people share Young’s pessimistic view. In every demographic category — Black, white, old, young, Asian, Latino, male, female, and political affiliation — the poll found a majority believed that university admissions should be based on merit as measured by marks, examination scores, and other indices of scholarly achievement. This opinion spanned all social classes, including those who were nowhere near the top of the economic ladder.

Is the public’s faith misplaced? To some extent, the answer is yes. Family income, school quality and other contextual factors influence the grades and examination scores that form the basis for admission to university. By ignoring the social and physical challenges applicants had to overcome, a system based solely on marks underestimates the academic potential of disadvantaged applicants while over-valuing those with more fortunate backgrounds. Measures of merit must be improved if we want to ensure that all applicants have a fair equality of opportunity to compete.

Would more valid, reliable, and fairer ways of measuring merit satisfy Young? The answer is no. Even if it were possible to achieve perfectly fair equality of opportunity for all applicants, it would not make any difference to Young because such a system would still lead to unequal outcomes. And he is not the only one to feel this way; prestigious academics share similar views.

The view from the Ivory Tower

Although they work at highly selective, world-famous universities, Yale professor Daniel Markovits and Harvard professor Michael Sandel believe their universities’ selection processes are unfair. They have each written books denouncing merit-based advancement. Like Young, they are fierce critics of a system they have personally benefitted from.

In The Meritocracy Trap, Markovits picks up on Michael Young’s theme — merit-based rewards stratify society — and proceeds to blame merit-based selection for practically every conceivable social ill. According to Markovits, income inequality, opioid deaths, mental illness, violent crime, and even suicide result from a system that uses merit to allocate social resources. Like Young, he believes making universities more inclusive by widening access to higher education to currently unrepresented groups would not help. “The afflictions that dominate American life arise not because meritocracy is imperfectly realised, but rather on account of meritocracy itself.”

In Markovits’ view, meritocracy has “become precisely what it was invented to combat: a mechanism for the dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations.” “Merit is a sham,” he writes. It “is not a genuine excellence but rather — like the false virtues that aristocrats trumpeted in the ancien regime — a pretence, constructed to rationalise an unjust distribution of advantage.”

Markovits fills his book with dismal descriptions of modern life. “Meritocracy traps entire generations inside demeaning fears and inauthentic ambitions.” Also, like Young, Markovits believes members of the meritocracy use their influence to benefit their children at the expense of those whose parents have lower education or income levels. For him, admission scandals, in which parents connive with corrupt admissions officials to get their children into elite universities, are not aberrations; they are precisely how a meritocracy works.

Michael Sandel’s book, Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? is less hyperbolic than Markovits’s, but it makes the same point. Using merit to determine who advances in life is inherently unjust. Even if it were possible to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to compete for social goods (such as entry to an elite university), society would remain stratified because innate differences in talent and perseverance would produce unequal outcomes.  

Like Young and Markovits, Sandel believes success in a merit-based system leads winners to consider themselves solely responsible for their own success. They fail to appreciate that luck and social circumstances play a crucial role. Moreover, the haughty self-regard of the winners leads them to demean those whose work doesn’t require a university credential.

According to Sandel, “Learning to become a plumber or electrician or dental hygienist should be respected as a valuable contribution to the common good, not regarded as a consolation prize for those who lack the SAT [university admission test] scores or financial means to make it to the Ivy League.” He provides no empirical data demonstrating that the wider society disrespects plumbers, electricians, and dental hygienists. Nor is it self-evident that these professionals would have chosen to study at Harvard even if they had aced the SAT. After all, plumbers and electricians make more money than many university graduates.

Of course, poorly paid workers perform essential services (aged care workers, food delivery drivers, hospital orderlies). The COVID-19 pandemic made it obvious how dependent we are on their work. However, it is unlikely that a Harvard degree would automatically increase their happiness and self-respect. Higher pay and greater job security would probably work much better.

Sandel’s views about plumbers and electricians may reflect the prejudices of Harvard academics, but he is undoubtedly correct when he says universities can adversely affect social mobility. Applicants without higher education are barred from many well-paying jobs, even when they have the experience and skills to perform them successfully. Sandel deems such credentialism “the last [publicly] acceptable prejudice.”

Critics of merit-based rewards have been influential in higher education. In addition to student selection, the hiring of academics, the award of scholarly prizes, and even which research articles scholarly journals publish are increasingly determined by group membership (sex, social class, race), with excellence treated as a second-order requirement. Academics may think this way, but the Pew poll mentioned earlier shows that the public does not. Most people believe that downgrading achievement in favour of group identity is unjust and leads to unfair outcomes. They want more emphasis on merit, not less.

Too much merit or not enough?

If meritocracy is cruel and unfair, and social rewards remain scarce (not everyone can go to Harvard), what selection process do critics propose to use instead of merit? Few bother to say. They point out that meritocratic selection creates winners and losers, an outcome they consider unfair. But is it? Great athletes differ from most people in physical strength, acuity, and dexterity.  Choosing such people to compete in the Olympics often leads to fame and fortune. It’s hard to see in what way this is unfair.

In the world outside the rarefied air of elite universities, the chief complaint is not that merit is rewarded but that it often isn’t. The US Supreme Court recently upheld a case brought by Asian students who were refused entry to Harvard University in favour of students from other minority groups with less stellar academic backgrounds. The Court agreed with the plaintiffs and declared such biased decision-making illegal. The Court’s ruling will reverberate beyond the ivy-covered walls of American universities. It will stimulate an international debate about how universities measure and apply merit when selecting students.

Sandel suggests a lottery for admissions, not for everyone, but only for those whose marks or examination scores are above a certain level.  He argues that random selection reduces hubris by making it obvious to successful applicants that they are not the sole authors of their success. (It is unclear whether Sandel believes Harvard professors should also be chosen randomly … perhaps he feels they are already sufficiently modest.)

It is undeniable that luck plays a role in any human endeavour. But because a selection system is imperfect does not mean throwing in a random element will make it fairer.  Sandel’s suggestion would turn university admissions into an opaque game of chance in which admission decisions are impossible to predict or explain.

A better way to improve selection is to assess merit using valid measures. Personal interviews, for example, have repeatedly been shown to be useless for determining success in higher education.  Universities use them as an excuse for rejecting applicants (such as Asian students) who would have otherwise been admitted. Seemingly objective measures may also be biased. When I reviewed higher education admissions in England, I found that some institutions gave preferences to candidates who were Dux (valedictorian) of their school.  This policy produced biased outcomes because, in Britain, only private schools have a Dux. (See the report: Fair Admission to Higher Education.)

As noted earlier, using only marks to select students can bias outcomes by ignoring relevant background information. Research shows that disadvantaged candidates — who had the grit to struggle through poor schooling and achieve good marks — may have as much, or even more, potential for higher education than high-ranked candidates whose parents could support their children with private schooling.  Ignoring the context in which marks are earned is like assessing an aptitude for piano by comparing those with years of practice to someone who has never had the opportunity to play one.

All Australian universities give some admissions assistance to disadvantaged students. (This is the same as lowering entry standards.) Giving a boost to underprivileged students is fair if universities can calculate how much the marks of disadvantaged students under-predict their performance at university. On the other hand, if the number of bonus points granted to disadvantaged students is simply the number necessary to ensure they are admitted, then the selection system is really a quota — a way of engineering the outcome of the admissions processes.

Well-meaning critics of meritocracy frequently put quotas forward to improve diversity. They believe universities and workplaces should mirror the population. Unfortunately, insisting company boards, parliaments, sporting teams and universities reflect the distribution of different groups in the general population which can lead to perverse outcomes. Robert Taylor illustrates this using a sporting analogy.

The percentage of black American professional basketball players far exceeds their numbers in the wider population. Insisting that the number of black players reflects their share of the general population would mean fewer black basketball players than there are currently. In Taylor’s words,

The mere fact that a group is overrepresented … does not necessarily imply that they had unfair advantages: … similarly, underrepresentation does not always imply unfair advantages.

Quotas violate commonly-held moral sentiments, which require all applicants to have a fair, equal opportunity to compete. In a June 2020 referendum, Californians were asked to permit universities to discriminate among applicants using race and other forms of group identity. The referendum was defeated by 57% to 43%. The majority of voters viewed quotas as unfair.

Fortunately, there are ways to increase equal opportunity without instituting quotas. For example, universities and employers could create outreach programs encouraging qualified candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply for admission and jobs. They can also provide candidates from under-represented groups with enrichment programs that would allow candidates to demonstrate their full potential. If their understanding of the effects of disadvantage is sufficiently precise, universities may also be justified in giving disadvantaged applicants extra admissions points. However, rigging the system so applicants from one group are automatically admitted is the opposite of equal opportunity. It is unfair and leads to a divided, mediocre and economically poorer society.

Conclusions

Early 19^th and 20th-century socialists supported meritocracy as a necessary corrective to the crushing nepotism and social stratification of the past. Conservatives, at the time, opposed it because it threatened traditional hierarchies. The positions are now reversed, with socialists preferring quotas and special treatment while the political right seeks equal opportunity. Such is the nature of modern politics.

Opinion polls and the recent California referendum result make it abundantly clear that the public is largely on the classical liberal side. People understand that a system of meritocracy may produce some degree of social stratification, but they believe the alternatives are much worse. A reward system based on group identity and quotas would reduce social solidarity, breed resentment and make Australia economically poorer.

The best way to address the drawbacks of merit-based selection is to break down artificial barriers, dismantle systemic biases, and ensure that everyone, whatever their background, has a fair shot at achieving their potential. Decades of experiments with various forms of socialism, communitarianism, and so on have all reached the same conclusion. Meritocracy works. Rewarding hard work, dedication, and talent incentivises those with extraordinary abilities to work harder, thereby providing economic and social benefits to everyone in society.

No one admires unearned advancement. Luck may give some people special talents, but even Mozart had to practise. Such hard work deserves reward. Shunning meritocracy is self-defeating both socially and economically. Instead, let’s strive to refine and perfect it. A truly liberal meritocracy treats all people fairly, acknowledges our shared humanity, and affords all members of society the opportunity to rise based on their merits. The great American educator Horace Mann called education the great equaliser; it would be a tragic irony to condone unequal treatment to achieve it.[

This article is an extract from “In Defence of Meritocracy”, which can be read or downloaded free from the Centre for Independent Studies by clicking this link: https://www.cis.org.au/publication/in-defence-of-meritocracy/

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