I had a few thoughts on Josh Tucker’s remarks on academia as a meritocracy.
The background is that PhD. programs are being attacked for exploiting graduate students, making them work long hours at low pay with little hope of a good job at the end of the tunnel, and Josh responded, in defense of political science Ph.D. programs, that students are willing participants here (if conditions were really so bad, why would they keep applying) and that it is necessary to admit more students than there are good jobs, in order for the system to select the best candidates for future advancement. In Josh’s words:
And this, perhaps, is why it is not a bad thing that we admit more PhD students to programs than we have jobs for as university professors. Because the alternative is that we have to decide a lot earlier who is going to be good and who is going to bad. If I can admit 20 students to the Ph.D. program at NYU next year, then that is 20 students who have a chance to shine. They may not all make it, but it is worth considering whether we are better off giving those 20 students a chance then picking now – based solely on their undergraduate record – only 5 who will be given a chance.
Like major league baseball, a successful academic career is a very good gig. Do we really owe every 22 year old that is admitted to a PhD program the right to that career solely on the basis of getting into a PhD program? Or is it enough to give them a chance to succeed, knowing full well that not all of them will? Personally, I’d rather give more people a chance, in large part because I don’t think we know which 22 year-olds are going to make the best academics. Like it or not, academia is a meritocracy.
I see what Josh is saying, in particular, his point that prospective graduate students are adults and are presumably applying to Ph.D. programs for a good reason. Maybe some of them are dupes, but it’s hard to believe all or even most of them are.
But I think some of the issues aren’t as simple as he present them.
For one thing, the argument about when to make the selection is based on there being a fixed number of jobs (comparable to the contract agreements of Major League Baseball that set up some fixed amount of jobs at specified minimum salaries). But the argument on the other side is not just that Ph.D. students are competing for a fixed number of jobs, but that the ready availability of low-paid Ph.D. students allows universities to reduce the number of faculty positions. If you can get a student to teach, why bother to hire faculty? I’m not necessarily agreeing with this counter-argument (after all, when NYU and other universities want cheap teachers, they’ll often hire adjuncts at a couple thousand bucks a pop), but I think it’s central to the discussion.
I’m also not so happy with the baseball analogy because the main function of minor league baseball is to select players for the major leagues. In contrast, the main function of Ph.D. programs is to education, not selection. At the very least, we spend a lot more time in education and collaboration with students than on selection.
To step back a bit, I’m bothered by Josh’s apparent acceptance of the concept of “meritocracy.” As political scientist James Flynn has pointed out, there’s ultimately no such thing as a meritocracy. The problem is not with the “ocracy.” In Flynn’s words:
The case against meritocracy can be put psychologically: (a) The abolition of materialist-elitist values is a prerequisite for the abolition of inequality and privilege; (b) the persistence of materialist-elitist values is a prerequisite for class stratification based on wealth and status; (c) therefore, a class-stratified meritocracy is impossible.
To put in in the context of academia: If these jobs are truly desirable, people will do what they can to get them. “People doing what they can” is inconsistent with the idea of a level playing field which is a precondition for merit-based hiring. Just take a look at letters of recommendation written by big shots to see what I mean. Or, to put it another way, meritocracy eats itself.
That’s one reason I’m skeptical of the claim when he writes:
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, and the more of your peers that respect you, the more job offers you are going to get and the more money you are going to make.
Whoa! First, I don’t think the progression from “earning respect” to $ is so clear as all that; and, second, people can and do use the power and $ at the end of that road to affect what comes before.
I say this not to dismiss Josh’s arguments but to put them into a larger context.
