Rethinking merit over lunch...

I was fortunate to be involved in a conversation between a fascinating group of people about rethinking merit over lunch yesterday.   A whole bunch of issues were raised, but I just want to mention a few that stood out to me.

The first was how contextual the discussions about diversity and merit were.  Two of the people round the table came from small, open institutions that were already diverse and representative of their community.  For them, rethinking merit was not a pressing problem.  Another came from a state university that had traditionally had a diverse group of students but was now being forced to re-evaluate its approach to merit because of an increase in applications and concomitant resource constraints.  Finally, there was a member of a selective medical school where thinking differently about merit was essential; without a new understanding of merit they could not have a diverse student body.  Their solution was to set a threshold MCAT level above which statistics showed nobody would drop out of medical school.  All applicants who met that threshold were then evaluated entirely on other criteria to determine who would be admitted.  That solution was either unnecessary or inappropriate at the other institutions.

Secondly, the discussion got my mind churning over the need for the project of redefining merit to be a society-wide initiative. It would be impossible to merely redefine merit at the level of admissions to college without also changing the way that merit is measured before and after college.  If employers continue to focus on GPA as a predictor of potential for its employees, changing admissions criteria does not really redefine the way we as a society think about merit.  It simply postpones the point at which the restrictive definition of merit becomes relevant.  Although that is certainly an improvement – as some students will get a chance to meet those standards – shouldn’t we really be trying to alter our understandings of merit at all levels and sectors of society?  Similarly, to really change thoughts about merit, we should rethink the way we teach from K-12 right through to post-graduate levels.

A final issue was the role of competition between and within institutions as a barrier to rethinking merit.  As long as the selectivity and exclusivity of institutions remains an important measure of social capital there will be serious resistance to altering the place of selective institutions in society.  In this sense, rethinking merit has to be linked to the discussion about the public role and responsibilities of institutions of higher education.  One of the participants used his own faculty (the selective medical school) as an example.  As a state university, the State saw its role as producing doctors for the State.  However, the faculty itself saw the institution existing to make their children and their neighbors’ children into doctors.  In that context, can we effectively alter understandings of merit (at least in highly selective institutions) without altering our understanding of what it is that universities should be doing?