Making a Mockery of Meritocracy

Need-aware admissions demonstrate the hollowness of our system of prestige

Photo by Charles DeLoye on Unsplash

In 1958, a British sociologist named Michael Young wrote a book called The Rise of the Meritocracy. The book envisioned a British society in which social class no longer mattered. Instead, the important people in society would rise to the top because of their intelligence and effort. The book introduced the term “merit…