Tag Archive

luck

What’s Luck Got to Do with It? The Admissions Scandal and Egalitarianism

Most of the analysis of the college admissions scandal that was revealed last week has assumed that “merit” is, in a sense, the culprit—the concept that holds up a rotten system of privilege, hypocrisy, and, apparently, outright illegality. For several decades now, critiques of the idea of “meritocracy” surface whenever there is a discussion of education’s social function as a sorting system, usually because of some scandal involving standardized testing or college admissions procedures. These conversations about the validity of education-as-sorting are important, if a bit repetitive. Critics doubt whether educational institutions actually can determine something as vague as “merit,” Read more