The Merit Myth

Carnevale, Schmidt, and Strohl begin The Myth of Merit with a bold but not counter-intuitive claim: the very institutions that often teach young people to be concerned about inequalities based on class, race, gender, etc. are in many ways the fundamental drivers of those inequalities. The Myth of Merit argues that colleges and universities, particularly those that qualify as elite or "selective," have inbuilt mechanisms that favor those from more elite socioeconomic backgrounds, regardless of "objective" merit. From the desire for more prestigious rankings to the selection criteria used for admission to the way financial aid is allocated, selective schools work overtime to provide admission to legacy students and those with the generational wealth to attend better schools, participate in more extracurricular activities, or hire the best tutors (and psychologists) to ensure success on standardized tests. But even these standardized test measures, which are famously predicted by race/class/income and don't seem to represent actual student success in college, don't seem to provide a meritocratic ladder for well-performing students. The authors note that large numbers students in the top quartile of SAT scores drop off the map and fail to earn certificates or degrees, despite the likelihood that they would succeed if they enrolled in a selective program. The problem then spirals: selective colleges "select" on criteria that are not truly meritocratic, but have the resources to retain their students and ensure their graduation and professional success. Meanwhile, high-achieving students who don't meet the "selective" criteria often attend 4 year institutions with far fewer resources available to make sure they graduate and succeed post-college. This bleak story ends with a welcome and thorough chapter of proposed policy solutions and institutional reforms that could address the problems the authors highlight as inherent in our current system.

A couple critical notes: given the large role high school education plays in the story the authors tell, I was surprised to see few proposals aimed at high school education in the final section of the book. The authors suggest a national "K-14" educational system and efforts to improve guidance counseling across the board, but these hardly seem sufficient to address the educational disparities at the high school level that have such drastic downstream effects. In terms of the institutional reforms proposed, the authors often provide little discussion of how these reforms might be practically implemented. For example, they suggest that selective colleges need to "halt legacy admissions" and stop favoring the children of donors, because "there is no good reason to favor the children of donors." Well, it seems that the schools think that a steady stream of income is a plenty good reason to favor the children of donors. A proposal for new ethics rules is fine, but if the people responsible for adopting those new ethical guidelines are primarily interested in the financial interests of their university, it's difficult to imagine that they would be chomping at the bit to vote for reform.