Meritocracy
Once more, we are witnessing a squabble about meritocracy, this time centred around Michael Sandel’s recent book, The Tyranny of Merit. [i] If nothing else, the disagreements reveal the problematic nature of words. Since words mean what we choose them to mean, what words encompass can, and does vary considerably. Is a meritocracy “an elite group of people whose progress is based on ability and talent rather than on class privilege or wealth”? Or is it “a system in which such persons are rewarded and advanced”? Or is it about “leadership by able and talented persons”? [ii] If that wasn’t confusing enough, are we talking about a meritocracy as a concept, or as a description of actual practice? While these questions might seem to be about academic nitpicking, they are at the heart of what kind of society we believe is fair and just.
The debate was re-ignited by Michael Sandel’s book, but it has been around for a long time. For me, it started with Michael Young’s book, The Rise of the Meritocracy. [iii] Back in the late 1950s and with considerable prescience, Young saw trends evident then might lead to a very different kind of society. Young was a sociologist, and also very active in politics: his book used satire to describe possible changes over the next 75 years, but, like any worthwhile, pointed caricature, it bites hard, portraying changes and behaviours that appear so real as to be almost irrefutable.
He starts from the familiar and uncomfortable state of class in the UK in the 1950s. Not quite a caste system, but the lines between classes were clear, hard to break, and largely self-reinforcing. Aristocrats’ children would also be aristocrats, lawyers were the sons of lawyers (together with a few daughters, but not many), and working class families children continued to work in ‘blue-collar’ jobs. Educational reforms, free compulsory education and even free university courses might have allowed considerable class mobility, but evidence from the 1950s suggests most remained stuck in the same place in the class system where their parents were to be found.
For a child from that time, two educational paths existed: grammar schools and comprehensive (secondary modern) schools. Both were free, but entry to a grammar school was competitive and places limited. Class free? Supposedly. However, I knew that it was children like me, with good middle class parents, who enter a grammar school, but very few others, while the children of the ‘upper class’, the aristocracy of the past, would be sent to ‘elite’ fee-paying schools. Class reached deep: I remember one working class boy who attended the same grammar school I did, a very gifted mathematician. Socially isolated, but not without friends, he excelled in exams and went on to university. There the disjunction between his background and those around him was too jarring: he committed suicide, even though his academic results continued to be outstanding.
Michael Young’s account starts from changes in the education system, and then imagines how these might develop. He thought the next decade would see a new class system emerge, one defined by educational attainment. People with exceptional brains would learn from exceptional teachers, and slowly the old way, the aristocracy of birth, would turn into an aristocracy of talent. Society would remain hierarchical, and, almost without noticing, intellectual ability would result in as rigidly demarcated a social system as had been the case with class determined by birth. Why was this? Quite simple: Smart parents ensured their children passed the tests and exercises that progress demanded, with books in the home, and a household appreciation of school and learning: smart parents would produce smart children. As in my schoolfriend’s story, some did rise past their parents’ achievements, but most gave up along the way, as even he had in the end.
As Young imagined this process unfolding, merit measured by educational level would be the base of divisions and salary differentials. However, it would also lead to an erosion of any sense of community. In the past, classes acknowledged their responsibilities to one another: all those goggle-box dramas about lives up- and down-stairs in the 19th Century did convey one important point, aristocrats treated their staff well, as people, not a slaves, at least most of the time. Classes based on education would miss that point, he suggested. Those with education would look down on those with less academic achievement, and the distance between classes would grow wider. Those at the top would be proud of their achievements, while those further down saw themselves as ‘dunces’, stupid, bad at what they did. All of this, merit and salary differentials, was seen as the way things should be, and in his satire, change becomes harder. It makes for uncomfortable reading today, as we have arrived exactly at the point where this parable was leading us.
Clearly Michael Young wasn’t so much predicting the future as providing a cautionary tale. Would he be surprised to see society today? No, but ever hopeful, he would cling on to the last part of his account. Years later, he suggests, a new idea develops, that of job equality, and that the result of pressure from women. As women saw it, the system was patrilineal: men get the jobs, sorted out by their abilities. They marry, and their wives bring up their children, tasked to ensure their sons will end up in the same position in society as their fathers, even using genetic testing to reveal key abilities before a child is born. Where does this end? In the book we learn a revolution is coming, in 2034. Well, I suppose it’s not too late; it could still happen!
For a book by a social reforming Labour activist, The Rise of the Meritocracy reached some interesting conclusions. I suspect his intention was that by writing such a book, he could convince people to makes changes before a revolution was inevitable Certainly, he personally initiated many social reforms, from the Consumers Association (publishers of Which? magazine), the Social Science Research Council, the Open University, the University of the Third Age, to the School for Social Entrepreneurs. Whatever its purpose, his book made one thing clear: rewarding merit could easily prove as socially divisive as traditional social class.
Abilities are unevenly distributed. Some people are good at mathematics, others at planning. Moreover, people with a given ability may be more or less proficient than others with a similar ability: most people are competent at basic arithmetic, very few are good at advanced calculus. Clearly, there are some pursuits where exceptional ability is important: to repeat a well-worn example, if you need the intervention of a brain surgeon, you would want that to be carried out by the most able, and the most experienced doctor available. There are other activities where having the most proficient is neither essential, nor even important: I want my mailman to deliver my letters accurately, but as long as that basic skill is performed properly, I’m happy.
Things get a little more complicated when we compare abilities. Brain surgeon or car mechanic? Their skills have been honed by training and experience. The more sophisticated the demand, the fewer have the relevant ability. Many people perform some kind of medical intervention, but only some are deft enough to be good surgeons, and very few have the skills to be a good brain surgeon. Should they be paid more? In terms of helping patients, family doctors have much greater impact. Many people are good mechanics, but very few appear skilled and experienced enough to tune F-1 racing cars. Should they be paid more? My local service engineer impacts many more customers than the F-1 mechanic? Is merit a function of being highly skilled?
Identifying abilities and selecting those with the best skills creates problems. The first task is to identify the skills a person possesses. It is a complicated and frustrating task, for many reasons. First, some people are good at several things. Further, some like to perform particular tasks, even if they are not particularly good at them, and would perform much better in another area. In addition, some abilities are hard to determine; they have to be ferreted out and nurtured.
In business, companies often recruit new staff because they performed well in an interview, or achieved high marks in exams they’d taken, or stood out in some kind of assessment inventory. For the moment, we can set aside other reasons for choice, such as gender, appearance, good references or a connection to a senior person in the organisation, even though such biases are often the most important reason. To be honest, the process is close to random. The indicators we have of ability, especially for new entrants, are poor predictors of actual ability. Not only that, but, more often than not, the actual work a person undertakes is quite unlike the areas tested in an exam: we are still especially poor at identifying key interpersonal skills, and most of the time we fall back on choices based on personal preferences (‘someone like me’ is often favoured, even if the interviewer doesn’t realise it was the critical criterion on which they chose).
Once in the business, people start working. If they work well, work better than others, they are likely to be promoted. It seems they have ‘the right stuff’. That, too, is a far from reliable system. Many managers without knowing it (and some who do) will give better projects and more support to some staff rather than others. Some projects turn out to be easier to complete, even though that wasn’t evident at the start. Some staff know how to work the system, who to make use of, who will help them – and, after all, isn’t that a useful ability anyway? Some are skilled at backstabbing, and maybe that’s yet another useful organisational ability!
If that wasn’t complicated enough, there is also the question of how we reward different areas of ability? Customers are likely to believe the people at the top, paid the most, know the most. If the clerk on the front desk can’t answer your questions, you know what to do: ask for his or her manager. Often the manager knows less than that person you first spoke to, but they are senior. All that means is they have more power to make a decision, even if it’s uninformed!
All this goes to make a simple point. A meritocracy, based on identifying ‘talent’, is much trickier in practice than it is as a concept. It is hard to spot abilities early on, and it remains problematic later. I learnt about this many years ago when I was asked to help in the selection of applicants to a medical school. I collected data on a large number of graduates: the information included their performance on school examinations; national secondary level examinations; tests and examinations during the first three pre-clinical years; the assessments carried out in the three clinical years; and finally performance in college specialty examinations. I even had some reviews of ‘bedside manner’ recorded by physicians watching student on rounds.
The results were clear. Pre-medical school performance was a poor predictor of pre-clinical results. School and pre-clinical results were a poor predictor of clinical performance. None of these were good predictors of subsequent performance in passing specialty college examinations. Anecdotally, where there were teachers’ notes on bedside manner, these also proved poor predictors of subsequent performance. Against all this, I have to add, there was one other factor. When I talked to senior people in the faculty, they would tell me about an outstanding graduate. When I asked as to what had demonstrated their path to success, a common refrain was “I don’t take any notice of exams, I could tell X was going to be outstanding”. Unfortunately, I had no way of checking if they had felt this before X became known as a top practitioner!
This leads us back to The Tyranny of Merit. One critic commented. “There is something inherently ridiculous about a Harvard professor writing a book on the ‘tyranny of merit’.” [iv] That was fun, but Andrew Adonis goes on to observe Sandel links merit to qualifications, university degrees, ‘credentialism’. Isn’t this what Michael Young’s satire was addressing? But a meritocracy isn’t a society run by people with degrees, it is “an elite group of people whose progress is based on ability and talent rather than on class privilege or wealth”. By linking meritocracy to formal qualifications, Sandel has muddied some already murky waters.
Let’s take the argument in a different direction. We might want to live in a meritocracy, if by that we mean a society in which progress is based on ability and experience. Clearly, I want the people best able to undertake tasks to do so. I’m well aware that academic qualifications are largely irrelevant – except perhaps for teaching students and adding to esoteric knowledge. In most spheres of my life, I want a person who’s skilled and experienced, whether as a plumber, author or manager: demonstrable proficiency and effective application matter, but I’d go even further. I see the world as Michael Young the activist did, focussed on pursuing the common good. Capabilities and skills that contribute to a better society are equally worthy.
So how should we reward different skills? Rewards, especially incomes, have a dual role, externally indicating how skills are valued, and internally motivating us to improve. The motivational aspect of income levels is self-evident. But recognition matters, too. We want people to feel good about what they do, their skills, and how they contribute to the common good. If income differentials establish worth, of social value, then inequalities are problematic.
If we equate merit with skills, not degrees, what justifies paying people with some abilities more than those with others? I wish I knew the answer. Economic rationalists tell us salaries are a matter of supply and demand, and this justifies a CEO earning 100 times more that an average employee. What a nonsense. We’ve known for years CEO salaries are driven by gaming the system, yet a fix is still being debated, and little has changed. In the past I’ve suggested the value of job evaluation, looking at knowledge, task and skills across employment sectors, at generic competencies rather than narrow skills. Other changes that are needed. Restricting income spread, from the lowest to the highest, is essential: no-one is worth a hundred times more than another person. Moreover, it is both abhorrent and archaic that a primary teacher, a nurse, or a bus driver is paid so much less than data analyst, accountant or footballer, especially where this difference is clearly gender based. Quite clearly, we can and must do better.
[i] Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020
[ii] These definitions come from dictionary.com
[iii] The Rise of the Meritocracy, Pelican, Penguin Books, 1962
[iv] ‘The Harvard Supremacy: The Tyranny of Merit’, Review by Andrew Adonis, Literary Review, December 2020
