What Merit Means: College Admissions, Race, and Inequality in the United States and Britain
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Authors
Warikoo, Natasha
Issue Date
2014-11-15
Type
event
flash_audio
flash_audio
Language
Keywords
Educational Sociology
Alternative Title
The Liberal Arts in an Unequal Society
Abstract
In my talk I will discuss how students attending selective colleges make sense of the admissions process, and compare that meaning-making across the United States and Britain. While colleges have placed increased priority on attracting nontraditional students, simultaneously tuitions have risen and the preparation of students for admission has grown. Given this culture of admissions and public discussions about the underrepresentation of working class, black, and Latino students on selective college campuses, how do students make sense of the admissions process? I find that United States students calibrate their evaluations of merit, and emphasize the collective merit of their university cohorts, while British students espouse a universalist, individualist understanding of merit. Students in both national contexts reproduce the conceptions of merit espoused by their universities, which differ considerably between the United States and Britain. I conclude that in spite of a long history of student protest on college campuses, rather than engagement with symbolic politics on liberal-identified campuses, self-interest dominates student perspectives. It does so perhaps because students’ own status legitimation in extremely competitive admissions processes is at stake. Nevertheless, students in both national contexts are part of a colorblind, global elite that emphasizes fairness resulting from meritocracy, and that advocates cosmopolitanism without attention to inequality. I draw from 144 one-on-one in-depth interviews with undergraduates attending Harvard University, Brown University, and University of Oxford.