4 ms·

Academia as a Meritocracy

• bartonfink 16y ago
  "Like it or not, academia is a meritocracy. It may be a highly flawed meritocracy susceptible to overvaluing labels or fads of the day, but ultimately tenure is bestowed on those who earn the respect of their peers..." I wonder whether these flaws are in fact fatal to this guy's thesis. My understanding of academia (based solely on an M.S. and indirect observation of friends in the Ph. D process) is that academia is every bit as political as industry. It's not enough to have and publish good ideas, as one would expect in a true meritocracy. It's about having the right sort of ideas - ideas which are unusual enough to attract attention but not so unusual they get dismissed without real consideration. Branding and marketing are words I hear my academic friends throw out far too often to make me comfortable with the assertion that academia is, in fact, a meritocracy and not just a highly esoteric rat-race. A true meritocracy is either objective or as isolated from subjectivity as possible (e.g. a round-robin sports schedule where every team plays every other team in the conference). A system that requires the subjective approval of others for success (publication, employment, tenure) isn't much of a meritocracy at all. tl; dr - This guy's admission that tenure is based on the "respect of peers" is a pretty big hole in his argument.