Review by Kenneth OldfieldMichael Sandel, a professor of government theory at Harvard University Law School, considers how merit, an allegedly neutral standard, has become the guiding principle for deciding which candidate is best qualified for a position. Given their power to grant credentials, college faculty have become the primary arbiters in establishing who's competent, who's not, and what graduates must know to be deemed qualified. Who will be credentialed and who won't. Having a college diploma proves you are smarter than someone who didn't go beyond high school, if that far. Sandel asserts that this obsession with 'credentialism,' as he calls it, has caused too many college graduates to harbor feelings of conceit and condescension toward the uncredentialled, especially members of the working class (hereinafter also meant to include poverty-class individuals), whom Sandal defines as those employed in 'manual labor, service industry, and clerical jobs.' Credentialism is, in Sandel's words, 'the last acceptable prejudice.'

Students who are the first in their family to enter higher education join a rarified and often mystifying culture of rules, rites, and rituals. A first‐generation working‐class college student who became a faculty member offers his insights and recommendations after forty years in the academy.

An analysis of data from the premier public administration journals in Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States shows academic public administration has taken both a narrow and a conservative approach to four social equity issues, including gender, race, sexual orientation, and social class. The findings show these periodicals (a) seldom and sometimes never publish articles on the four themes; (b) confine nearly all their social equity writings to race and gender; sexual orientation and social class receive little or no attention; and (c) only publish such papers long after the matter has become fashionable in most other social circles. The article concludes by suggesting ways American public administration can develop a more intellectually diverse, proactive professoriat, thereby allowing for publishing more-and more timely-articles about emerging social equity topics.

The American Society for Public Administration's (ASPA) Code of Ethics commits it to representativeness, fairness, equality, and affirmative action. Notwithstanding these goals, mainstream public administration teachings, texts, and journals mostly ignore the role of social class in understanding the how and why of bureaucratic operations. This is especially puzzling given all the studies showing that socioeconomic status affects most life outcomes and, in turn, government's response to the resulting discrepancies. This study reviews the field's neglect of class matters and shows how this oversight limits the range of possible policy options available for consideration. The discussion closes by (a) suggesting ways to address this omission and (b) explaining how the recommended reforms are consistent with ASPA's Code of Ethics.

No abstract