A Culture of Hypermeritocracy
I’d like to know how higher education squares with economic class. Higher education, once seen as the proverbial gateway to the economic ladder, mirrors rather than corrects for the increasing divide between the have’s and the have not’s. Today reserving a seat in places like Harvard and its ilk is becoming virtually impossible even for the most competitive students. In 2014, the selectivity of these top colleges has gone up on the average of 45 percent since 2005. At Stanford, for example, the admit rate for the incoming class of 2014 was a startling 5.07 percent.
Referring to the ever widening income gap between the top decile and the bottom 50 percent of American households, Piketty, the author of Capital in the 21st Century uses the term hypermeritocracy. A hypermeritocratic society banks on clear winners and losers. According to the 2010 Federal Reserve records, the top decile of U.S. households owned 72 percent of America’s wealth while the bottom half laid claim to a mere 2 percent (Piketty, 257). I am proposing that there is a correlation in more ways than one between the outrageously skewed wealth distribution in America and college admissions to elite colleges. When roughly 75 percent of students at the 200 most highly rated colleges according to a 2011 study came from families in the top quartile of income bracket, what can we say about how higher educational system contributes to the current crisis of income inequality and the culture of winner-takes-all?
A typical contender at one of these institutions must possess a near perfect SAT reasoning and subject test scores and around 12 Advanced Placement classes by the time she graduates. Awards in science and math competitions along with founding a charity, writing a book, and excelling in a sport or musical instrument accrue additional points.
Rarely do students, teachers, or parents stop to question, what’s it all about? Is the 5 hours of sleep or the toxic levels of stress worth the grand prize? Most students don’t have the time to ponder these weighty questions. Neither do their parents who see Harvard and Stanford as synonymous with upward social and economic mobility. They will not think twice about investing thousands into SAT tutoring and other forms of educational enrichment to increase their children’s chances for admission into top colleges. High parental income is the unsaid criterion for admission into elite colleges.
I’d like to know what kind of learning takes place in K-12 education under such a hypermeritocratic system. What kind of a mindset are we replicating? And what type of citizenry is the educational system producing for the 21st century? One sixth grader I know burst into tears upon receiving her first B ever in a math exam. In between sobs, she explained that for sure she would end up homeless. I was taken aback. If left unabated, this student, a decade down the road, would be forever preoccupied with how she comes off in the eyes of others and decidedly unprepared to deal with the responsibilities of democracy in the modern economy. Another missed opportunity in education.
