Back in October 2021, after a business visit to Uzbekistan, I wrote a blog about the importance of higher education in enabling young people to face up to the challenges of the 'knowledge economy'. (https://timboatswain.wixsite.com/website/post/meritocracy-and-higher-education).
I argued that at the heart of any fair and successful society is the concept of merit: educational opportunity would identify the talented and social mobility should ensure that people of merit would have the power to determine the future of society.
I, however, also referred to Michael Young's 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy, where he criticises meritocracy as anti-egalitarian and undemocratic as, in reality, it creates a new hierarchy, fracturing modern society between 'the haves and the have-nots'.
This debate has been recently reignited for me by an article by Adrian Woolridge, Meritocracy and the Rise of Populism. In it, drawing on Michael Young, he argues, In a knowledge-based society, the most important influence on your life chances is not your relationship to the means of production, but your relationship to the machinery of educational and occupational selection. This is because this machinery determines not just how much you earn, but also your sense of self.
His thesis is that qualifications now govern the hierarchy in societies and this has created a polarisation between 'the exam passers' and the 'exam flunkers'. For Woolridge this results in a division in society between the meritocrats and the plebs, that is the 'cognitive elite' and 'the rest', which has, in turn, given birth to the rise of popularism.
Thus, the 'global village has created a new establishment that is based on meritocracy. It is made up of individuals who have 'succeeded' at school and university. It is these people who now dominate the top jobs in the knowledge economy. An economy that demands intellectual skills and, most importantly, hard evidence of those intellectual skills in the form of credentials, ie pieces of paper: diplomas, degree certificates from educational establishments.
The argument that this has led to popularism is that those left behind, the 'exam flunkers', in anger and despair are rebelling against the political elite 'the exam passers' and, in the mirage of a previous 'golden age', vote for the popularists, who are invoking reactionary tribalism, nationalism, xenophobia and a mythical past. The popularist movement has led to politicians of the ilk of Trump, Orban, Erdogan, Marine le Pen, etc., and, for the UK, Farage and Brexit. The recent European Union elections have demonstrated the support for the hard right, which is on the march against the existing liberal establishment, demanding in Trump's words that their tribe is 'great again' and 'the draining of the swamp': that is the liberal, wokist political establishment.
The data behind the rise of popularist thinking corroborates Young's thesis of the fracturing of society between the educated and the uneducated. Take, for example, the UK's Brexit referendum: 72% of people, who had no educational qualifications voted to leave, compared with only 35% of those with a university degree. This reflects the dissatisfaction of those being left behind, Woolridge's 'flunkers', not only with the perception of the European establishment in Brussels but it also revealed a fundamental distrust of the British Government, which was advocating remain. Overall, there has been a growing sense of marginalisation for the less educated, who have hit back by supporting a popularist agenda. It is noticeable that across Europe parliaments are increasingly dominated by graduates. Before the latest European elections, more than 80% of MEPs had university degrees and more than 25% had PhDs.
The general view from the economists was that globalisation would make us all richer. The reality is that an elite, educated to benefit and control the knowledge economy, has grown rich, sometimes with obscene amounts of money, at the expense of the rest. The financial crisis of 2008 revealed the vulnerability of a global system that led to an extraordinary situation where the taxpayers were forced to rescue the bankers. In the end, it was the 'rest' who paid the major price as living standards slipped and in some cases plunged. The ruling elite, with their expertise and qualifications, failed the ordinary people and there is now a distrust of experts and conspiracy theories abound - all meat and drink to popularist politicians.
Wooldridge in his article claims the meritocratic elite, bear a disproportionate share of the responsibility for the mess we're in at the moment. They let their arrogance and self regard get the better of them. They promised universal prosperity and reduced turbulence and stagnation. They owe it to the world to repair the mess that they have created.
But how?
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