I may be lost here but...<p>> Meritocracy is the idea that people get ahead based on their own accomplishments rather than, for example, on their parents’ social class.<p>> Here’s a clarifying stat: At two Ivy League schools that Markovits surveyed, “the share of students from households in the top quintile of the income distribution exceeds the share from the bottom two quintiles combined by a ratio of about three and a half to one.”<p>Just me or is anyone else reading this as "kids are getting ahead because of their parents' social status. Let me tell you about why having a system based on merits is failing us."? Because it doesn't seem like we're using a system based on merits (alone) if kids are getting so far ahead because of their parents' social status.<p>I know wealth brings more opportunities, but is this any different (in practice) than nepotism? I think a lot of us want a system where there is more social mobility, but framing a conversation around our society's meritocracy (which clearly doesn't exist and is admitted in the article) feels more like sensationalism and distracts from the root issues.
The entire premise here seems to revolve around university admissions.<p>Who measures success based on which university someone went to? Isn't that just the preamble to one's life after graduation, which is when people actually hit the road and make something of themselves?<p>Of course going to an Ivy League school has advantages, but constructing an argument against meritocracy based on access to institutional higher education is strange.
I'm not really convinced a true meritocracy would ever be possible. Sure, you can maybe get closer then we are now, but there will always be nepotism, geographical problems, how well someone is parented, etc, even if you somehow equalized wealth.<p>Additionally, why is a meritocracy even desirable? You don't choose your parents, you don't choose your genetics, you don't choose to be born able-bodied or not, so why should you be rewarded for those things over somebody else? Under a meritocracy, a kid born with a 60 IQ and who's physically disabled would have a pretty bad life compared to an able-bodied person born with an IQ of 150. Since neither choose their lot in life, why reward one over the other?<p>The only kind of meritocracy that makes sense to me, is to measure how hard a person works, with the understanding that some people will have to work harder to accomplish as much as others. But again, I don't think that's possible to achieve, and likely never will be.
As a person who grown up and got education in the former Soviet Union, pr Daniel hits a wrong target. In SU, higher education ( except some prestigious areas like international diplomacy, or dental doctors ) was almost completely based on personal performance. Prestigious high school were rare, but did not need any extra money. Yet, the pattern was exactly the same: In universities, in these high schools with better education, all but few students were from highly educated parents. If you from factory workers family, much likely that you will drop from high school and go to factory, after professional training. Soviet Union regarded a little smart people. Engineers and Doctors ( except extraordinary ones ) were among the poorest. My mom as engineer had salary about two times less than ordinary factory workers. US rewards educated people best, this is why strict correlation between education level and income. But the main problem, and this is common for both US and SU, that less educated parents do much less efforts to push their children.
Don't remember who said it, but it describes the problem: "To be educated person, You have to graduate three universities. The first one should finish your grandfather, the second do your father, and you graduate the third"
A review of this book was discussed recently: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20966581" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20966581</a>
I would differentiate the idea of meritocracy and an implementation. By definition, the idea [1] seems to be a fair and efficient way to encourage effort and achievements.<p>It's an implementation that fails, as usually. Our society focuses a lot on traditional signals of merit like advanced degrees, previous work at sound companies. We assume that people with those things on their CV are more able than without. The thing is even if there is some correlation, the the process of filtering is far from being optimised on people who can bring maximum benefit to a company and society in general. We can filter out people with weird backgrounds, poor families, no sound education, without polished manners and language.<p>They mentioned Germany is the article, I would not say Germany has a right and efficient meritocracy model for 21 century. Germany gives an individual a better chance in life by free education. Anyway, the rich Germans would send their children to elite British and US universities. The university education and the notes you got there mean a lot for German companies. Risky ideas, audacity are not encouraged, even switching to a job that is different from your diploma is perceived as very unusual and amateurish move. So German meritocracy is optimised for traditional careers, not for groundbreaking innovations.<p>Recently, I was impressed with Israel's innovation and business culture [2]. When sending their people to the military or in business in general your personality, ideas, and chutzpah [3] seems to matter much more than your diploma. The focus is more on practical skills and ideas rather then on good notes and sound names. And this meritocracy implementation seems to work good for the country: Israel does not have impressive scores in maths academic excellence comparing to Singapore, Japan, Germany, but they have very impressive results in the number of startups and innovations.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy</a><p>[2] <a href="http://startupnationbook.com/" rel="nofollow">http://startupnationbook.com/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062883049/chutzpah/" rel="nofollow">https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062883049/chutzpah/</a>
The point is NOT to mess up the end points (univ entry) so we force some kind of diversity. What we should do is to diversify educational resources. The endpoints, if I may argue, are actually NOT that meritocratic, because powerful people can buy entrances. Univ entry should ONLY be hard GPA, or at least 80% hard GPA, not brownie points like voluntary work that only rich kids have the leisure to do. And then you spread good educational resources around evenly.
I want the most talented and skilled people performing their best at what they are most talented and skilled at. That's how you make progress. I fail to see how that harms anyone, and certainly not everyone.
Glad to see the word “meritocracy” used for what it was coined for[1]: a dystopia, while almost everyone nowadays seems to use the word positively.<p>[1]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy</a>