By James Pethokoukis and Adrian Wooldridge

Today, parents scramble to shuttle their kids to and from
extra-curriculars, provide them with SAT prep, and leverage their money
and connections — all to get their children admitted into elite schools. And
in recent years admissions scandals have further undermined confidence in elite
institutions. America purports to judge individuals on their merits, but are
the rich rigging our institutions? On a recent episode of “Political
Economy,” Adrian Wooldridge addressed that question and other criticisms of
meritocracy.

Adrian is the political editor and Bagehot columnist at The Economist. His latest book is The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.

Below is an abbreviated transcript of our conversation. You
can read our full discussion here. You can also subscribe to my podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, or download the podcast on Ricochet.

Pethokoukis: Can you walk us through your thesis about
how meritocracy made the modern world? 

Wooldridge: Meritocracy essentially means judging people on
the basis of their innate abilities rather than on the basis of their polish or
their social connections or their social status or their birth. And I think it
also implies some sort of broader commitment to equality of opportunity, or at
least very significant educational opportunity provided by the state, because
it would be impossible for people reasonably to compete in a modern economy
unless they get access to these things.

Most societies throughout time have been based on principles
of being born into your social status or the principle of dynasty or the
principle of patronage, or indeed the principle buying and selling offices,
which before modern times was absolutely widespread. The modern world was
basically created by a succession of meritocratic revolutions against
aristocratic societies and societies of patronage. And it was the broadening of
meritocracy — bringing in women, ethnic minorities, working class people into
that framework of promotion on the basis of talent examinations, open
competition — that really created the modern world as we now see it.

What is the critique of meritocracy? Is it our failure to
achieve it? Or is it that the whole notion wrongheaded?

There are many people who say, “Meritocracy is great in
theory, but we don’t have it at the moment. We have something that’s a mockery
of meritocracy.” So that’s one critique: that we don’t have it. The other
critique would be, “Even if we could create a meritocracy and turn America into
a true meritocracy rather than the sham that it now is, it’s a very bad thing,
because meritocracy enshrines all sorts of things — such as competition, such
as constant sorting of people on the basis of ability — and those things are
wrong.”

The person who actually invented the term “meritocracy” was a man called Michael Young in 1958 in his brilliant book, The Rise of the Meritocracy. He thought meritocracy is a terrible thing because it smuggled the idea of competition into what should be a socialist vision of the future. And because it made everybody who succeeded intolerably smug and everybody who failed absolutely wretched, because they couldn’t blame anybody but themselves for their failure. So there are two very different critiques of meritocracy which actually get muddled up in lots of people’s minds.

Does the college entrance scam an example of how the US
just isn’t a meritocracy anymore, if it ever was?

I think that’s the most serious criticism that we have of
the meritocratic idea. And it’s indeed a criticism that to a very, very
significant degree I share. Now, clearly something like the college entrance
scam — where people were literally buying places — that’s illegal, and legal
action has been taken.

But what people who are saying that meritocracy is a sham
are really saying, is that the legal version of it is a sham, because people
who are born into privilege just spend so much more money on getting ahead. And
because they’re sort of congealing at the top of society — because
knowledgeable, educated people are transmitting their privilege to their
children — you are getting lower and lower levels of social mobility. And I
think that critique is true, but the question is: How do you deal with that
problem of the sort of calcification of society? The argument of my book is
that you need to have more meritocracy.

What steps can we take to become a more meritocratic
society?

Only somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of places at
Harvard are given away on the basis of pure academic performance. A huge number
of places are hooked to various things such as whether your parents went to
Harvard, privileges for donors, and affirmative action. So I would be in favor
of getting rid of that and giving 100 percent of the places on the basis of
pure academic merit.

We need to start helping people much earlier on in their
educational journey. However much you can game SATs or IQ tests, they’re less
class-biased than other forms of selection, of which the most absurd of course
is the sort of “what I did on my holidays,” “what I did in my
gap year,” and that sort of thing.

The more you get rid of examinations, the more you actually
do down poorer people and privilege already privileged people. You delay
selection later into life and it becomes an endurance race, and the people who
win the endurance race are those who’ve got parents who are capable of
supporting them for longer.

What would it look like if America were to give up on
meritocracy?

Well, I think that is in many ways not “what if?” but
“when?”, because America is engaged at the moment in a huge revolt against
meritocracy. If you do that, you get a society in which positions are given
either arbitrarily or on the basis of political power. So instead of a system
based on results in which people win prizes on the basis of effort and ability,
you have a system of spoils. It creates a constant system of agitation and
competition — not in the good sense of people all striving to learn things, but
in the bad sense of people all agitating for spoils.

And in China you have this “examination state”
back in a major way — with a huge education system, massive investment in
universities, massive investment in a very competitive mass educational system
— but also using meritocratic methods to select and promote civil servants, a
big growth in state capacity. Now, if we have a world in which China is
harnessing the meritocratic idea to reinforce the power of the Communist Party,
and America at the same time is dismantling meritocracy or softening
meritocracy, America loses.

The post 5 questions for Adrian Wooldridge on whether meritocracy should be preserved appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.