Unraveling the myth of meritocracy within the context of US higher education

Liu, Amy

doi:10.1007/s10734-010-9394-7

Cited by 135 publications

(141 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Meritocracy is widely considered to be a positive concept that should be the framework for various aspects of society, although as Sen and others observe, what constitutes merit is socially constructed in each society at a given historical moment. This principle suggests that institutions should be governed by people chosen on the basis of merit-defined by ability and education-rather than other, more arbitrary factors such as social class, ancestry, race, ethnicity, or wealth (Liu, 2011).…”

Section: Distributive Justice In the Educational Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributive Justice Antecedents of Race and Gender Disparities in First-Year College Performance

et al. 2015

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Public education is a sphere of society in which distributive justice with respect to the allocation of opportunities to learn can have profound and lasting effects on students' educational outcomes. We frame our study in the distributive justice literature, and define just outcomes specifically from a meritocratic and strict egalitarian perspectives in order to investigate how assignment to academic tracks and the availability of opportunities to learn during high school are associated with students' academic achievement during college. We examine the role of ''just'' placement into high school academic tracks, ''just'' access to high-quality teachers, and ''just'' assignment of secondary schools' resources in high school, in relation to college freshmen's grade point averages (GPA). We utilize longitudinal data from a unique dataset with over 15,000 students who spent their academic careers in North Carolina public secondary schools and then attended North Carolina public universities. Our results suggest that ''unjust'' assignment of students to certain high schools, access to high-quality teachers, and assignment to learn in specific academic tracks result in long-lasting consequences that are reflected in freshman college GPA. Importantly, findings also show that the direction and magnitude of the relationship between distributional injustice at schools and college performance is moderated by students' own gender and race. Race and gender interact with the high schools' institutional contexts operationalized by tracking practices, teacher quality, and by school racial and socioeconomic composition. Results show that similar settings do not affect all students in the same ways.

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Section: Distributive Justice In the Educational Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributive Justice Antecedents of Race and Gender Disparities in First-Year College Performance

et al. 2015

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“…We may like to think that our educational system rewards ability and effort (Karabel, ; Liu, ), but student success at navigating higher education is shaped by numerous characteristics other than how smart they are and how hard they work. Student experiences vary widely by nonacademic characteristics such as gender and ethnicity, as do patterns of student persistence, completion, and engagement in college (Carnevale & Strohl, ; Witham, Malcom‐ Piqueux, Dowd, & Bensimon, ).…”

Section: Just Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeking and Doing Justice Through Educational Development

Jacobson

2018

To Improve the Academy

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One thing that has shaped my understanding of educational development more than anything else is a commitment to seeking and doing justice. I see this commitment as the animating force that breathes life into the best of what educational developers do and the core value that continually challenges us to do better. In the many contexts in which we work, the one thing that defines the role of educational development is the recognition that we need to continually examine and improve how well our institutional systems are doing justice to the communities that we are trusting them to serve.

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“…These include 'miraculous exceptions' (Bourdieu, 1996) who overcome an initial lack of cultural capital either by purchasing it later (e.g. hiring tutors, enrolling in an elite secondary school) or by exceptional effort (Liu, 2011).…”

Section: Fairness Inclusion and An Alternative Approach To Equity Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unlocking the gates to the peasants: are policies of ‘fairness’ or ‘inclusion’ more important for equity in higher education?

Pitman

2014

Cambridge Journal of Education

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Unraveling the myth of meritocracy within the context of US higher education

Cited by 135 publications

References 42 publications

Distributive Justice Antecedents of Race and Gender Disparities in First-Year College Performance

Distributive Justice Antecedents of Race and Gender Disparities in First-Year College Performance

Seeking and Doing Justice Through Educational Development

Unlocking the gates to the peasants: are policies of ‘fairness’ or ‘inclusion’ more important for equity in higher education?

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