In 1958, British sociologist Michael Young wrote a dystopian satirical novel called The Rise of the Meritocracy. The book skewered standardized testing and credentialing, imagining how elites could employ them to secure corruptive power. Young’s book was popular but his arrows missed their mark. The novel helped to speed meritocracy’s presence in the zeitgeist, for…
Tag: meritocracy
Merit Debunked
One of the most insightful books about higher education in the past few years is The Merit Myth: How Our Colleges Favor the Rich and Divide America, by Anthony P. Carnevale, Peter Schmidt, and Jeff Strohl. It received a good degree of notice and mostly positive reviews, and was mentioned as one of Forbes Magazine’s…