As for the argument that society will collapse because of the democratization of education and degrees and whatnot,it's at least a hundred years old argument. In France the right-wing has been whining about it for 50 years (especially regarding math) and we still have mathematicians that are among the best in the world.
I think you are thinking of "merit" as some intrinsic property of a person as opposed to measured performance. Some things are hard to measure, but many things are not. Putting people into positions based on the best estimates of how well they would perform is meritocracy.
What is your system for selecting people for positions if not by how well they would perform at the positions? What this typically devolves into patrimonialism or clientelism...where positions are given to related persons, friends, or in exchange for political power.
Okay here's a good example:
A company hires and pays a person to do job a, said person has skills and knowledge of topics x and y and gets the job done using skills x and y.
The same company hires person b, who doesn't have skills x and y, but still has the accreditation. Person b, doesn't get the job done, still gets paid and the company did not have the problem solved, or service/product to sell.
Further, if we don't set rigorous standards for admission and graduation the smarter people have their accreditations devalued. Additionally, employers and other agencies will not know who they are getting.
The idea lowering standards so 'anyone' can get into anything is dangerous, and creates chaos. It's anti-progressive.
Before: give them standard English and math tests, and if they do not pass make them take a year of non-credit remedial classes before letting them take any credit glasses.
After: everyone can take credit classes. For those that need extra work in math or English there will be programs that work concurrently with or as part of credit classes to catch them up on math or English.
Just re-read the sentence dispassionately.
You do realize that these are people who would flunk TOEFL if the TOEFL was a requirement the way it is for foreign student? Why are we accepting people who fail basic English into a university that has English as a primary teaching language? What are going to be the classes that these students would be taking concurrently with "Expressing yourself in paragraphs 49"? All of the soft sciences require papers that are graded. So they are out. Hard sciences? Nope, they are require algebra and our students cannot do basic algebra ( let us not pretend that universities have math proficiency requirements for admissions - it is just basic algebra and some geometry plus ability to reason ) or do basic problem solving. So I guess those classes would be yoga and basket weaving.
And in just 6-7 years ( these people won't graduate in 4 ) we would be wondering why is that we are having so few people getting jobs in STEM fields.
You mean it sarcastically, but you are literally correct. What has "merit" in so-called meritocracies is entirely subjective.
Also I don't think we have the meritocracy people claim we have. Being born into a well connected wealthy family is such a huge head start. And some of the people at the top seem to have little merit, for example the kardashians seem to be famous because they're famous. Not to pick on them but they are a public example of how money gets money.
This is the sort of crap people complain about whenever the meritocracy comes up. Sorry, but merit is not whatever you want it to be after the fact when you point to something that succeeded. That's called the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
Do you really think the nobility just rolled over and gave the middle classes all the power because they asked nicely?
Edit. Actually that is exactly what merit is. Meritocracy is not rule by the just, but rule by those most likely to be winners. It just happens that given the opportunity the “winners" are most likely to be found within then middle class.
Fun fact: the first president of Singapore was senior wrangler at Cambridge, which according to Wikipedia has been described as the "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain"[1].
Singapore also has one of the world's most liberal immigration policies, allowing practically anyone in who can get a reasonably paying job, instead of privileging the employment of its own citizens like most countries do.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senior_Wrangler_(University_of...
Prussia was really the first example of this in the west, where in 1770 all civil servants were required to pass a written exam.
More seriously any society not ruled by a hereditary nobility is a meritocracy. The nobility did not embrace this change - they just lost the war with the middle class.
I should say that no society is a perfect meritocracy and that the past winners are always conspiring to keep out the new, but overall most current societies in the modern world are a vast improvement over the old, inbred-nobility ruled alternative.
The Napoleonic French were a lot more meritocratic in their military and civilian career structure than the British who beat them on the seas.
Napoleon is a classic example of the success of meritocracy - it took the combined effort of the whole European nobility to defeat France and even then it was a close run thing.
People should learn things as they want, and not be required to meet arbitrary standards and degrees to obtain societal benefits.
A hundred years ago ~1% of the people went to college. Now it's more than 50%. The societal function of college has changed.
Then don't ask me to pay for you to do so. Check some books out of the library.
People are paying a lot of money to universities in exchange get a better life for themselves. If it doesn't improve their skills in any measurable way, we should try something else.
College proves that you can start something and finish it. Like you can do engineering, but even graduates of MIT need years in industry to learn the actual skills needed for their jobs.
GPA or any other grades is bad proxy for actual ability and employability.
Humans are good at studying for evaluations and measurements. But colleges that teach for that are a waste of time.
'real' colleges offer better networking, but often great teachers can be found in community colleges, where profs are not selected primarily for research.
A minority of students learn better in competitive environments. Self motivated students learn better in constructive non competitive environments which are more like apprenticeships than competition for grades.
My point is its not so much a weakening, as its a redirection back to the traditional place of a college for indoctrination of theology.
In a community of extreme political intolerance, algebra matters very little compared to political purity.
Seriously though, I'm worried about our future as a spieces. The knowledge and technologies we have developed, which require nurturing. We nurture modern civilization by making sure the smartest get into positions where they can express their intellect. Part of that process needs to be keeping rigours standards in place when it comes to education.