Is Merit Real?
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Anonymous
| Or just a product of wealth? |
Anonymous
| Uh, what? |
Anonymous
| Wealth and merit oftentimes go hand-in-hand because merit blossoms when it meets the resources of opportunity. |
Anonymous
|
Merit, as in academic or nonacademic achievements?
Merit is primarily due to winning the genetic lottery. You need a certain amount of physical and mental health, as well as higher-order cognitive reasoning. Additionally, you need to apply yourself to achieve in the spheres valued by universities and develop a certain amount of work ethic. Is this correlated with family wealth? Yes, because if you're intelligent, it's probable at least one of your parents is intelligent and might have parlayed that into wealth, as well as opportunities for you to have activities in which to prove your capacity to achieve! But smarts also blossom in poor and unstable homes. They don't make it to college as often as middle class smart kids, though, due to lack of direction and opportunity. |
Anonymous
“Transforming money into merit” https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/07/10/education-privilege-laundering-opinion |
Anonymous
Ah, you have an agenda. |
Anonymous
Nope. Just clarifying the question in case you don’t understand. |
Anonymous
| Yea there are plenty of schools giving merit / esp mid tier trying to attract top candidates and go up in ranks. It is real. |
Anonymous
Not just clarifying - you add a link that has a clear prejudice. |
Anonymous
| Ah, so this is a philosophical question about wealth and merit, and therefore really not about colleges (it’s not a question about merit *aid*). Why is it posted here? Seems like better suited for the off-topic forum. |
Anonymous
Not off topic at all. People post here all the time that admissions should be about merit. What if merit isn’t real? |
Anonymous
Let’s hear your rebuttal. |
Anonymous
|
The rebuttal is that prestigious colleges want successful alumni, not a bunch of scholars, per se. Prestigious schools want leaders across the spectrum of society, not just the arcane arts of English literature and philosophy.
So, not all students at prestigious colleges are the smartest of the application pool, but they are smart enough, and when coupled with their family wealth and connections, will be successful in life. While some may not like that, that very alumni may be the one that hires or mentors your super-intelligent, middle-class kid. This is nothing new, and it’s fine. The only people that find this shocking are those who come from environments where the schools they attend are based strictly on a test score. But, that too seems like a very narrow definition of merit, as we can talk all day about who has the wealth to prepare a kid for a specific exam. |
Anonymous
+100 That article is a survey of nonsense. It was posted as "opinion" but I'm actually a but surprised that IHE even posted it given the amount of fact free drivel and nonsense that it contained. |
Anonymous
I posted already at 19:03. Merit is a combination of genes, environment (which could be educational milieu and/or wealth and/or opportunity) and personal motivation/work ethic. Therefore merit is not solely a distillation of privilege. |