The Merit Myth
How Our Colleges Favor the Rich and Divide America
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
An eye-opening and timely look at how colleges drive the very inequalities they are meant to remedy, complete with a call—and a vision—for change
Colleges fiercely defend America's deeply stratified higher education system, arguing that the most exclusive schools reward the brightest kids who have worked hard to get there. But it doesn't actually work this way. As the recent college-admissions bribery scandal demonstrates, social inequalities and colleges' pursuit of wealth and prestige stack the deck in favor of the children of privilege. For education scholar and critic Anthony P. Carnevale, it's clear that colleges are not the places of aspiration and equal opportunity they claim to be.
The Merit Myth calls out our elite colleges for what they are: institutions that pay lip service to social mobility and meritocracy, while offering little of either. Through policies that exacerbate inequality, including generously funding so-called merit-based aid for already-wealthy students rather than expanding opportunity for those who need it most, U.S. universities—the presumed pathway to a better financial future—are woefully complicit in reproducing the racial and class privilege across generations that they pretend to abhor.
This timely and incisive book argues for unrigging the game by dramatically reducing the weight of the SAT/ACT; measuring colleges by their outcomes, not their inputs; designing affirmative action plans that take into consideration both race and class; and making 14 the new 12—guaranteeing every American a public K–14 education. The Merit Myth shows the way for higher education to become the beacon of opportunity it was intended to be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this detailed yet disappointing polemic, a trio of scholars from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce indict elite U.S. colleges for reinforcing income inequality, limiting social mobility, and ensuring "stratification based on race and class." According to the authors, top-ranked universities seek to "promote their respective interests" rather than "further the common good" through selective admissions policies that favor the children of alumni and donors, rely too much on standardized test scores (which reflect "socio-economic disparities" better than they predict academic performance), and award financial aid to students who don't need it. Meanwhile, low-income students admitted to "less-selective" institutions receive subpar educations, suffer higher dropout rates, and wind up in "lower-paying rank-and-file" jobs. Though the authors' indictment of the "market forces" driving stratification is valid, and their discussions of historical developments (including the implementation of the S.A.T. as a screening tool) can be illuminating, their dismissal of the majority of American colleges as "underfunded dropout factories" grates and reveals their own elitism. The book's reform proposals, including the worthy idea to extend guaranteed public education from 12 to 14 years, are more conjectures than actionable plans. This well-intentioned critique misses the mark.
