November 4, 2005

Merit's Demerits

By JULIA M. KLEIN

In America today, higher education is coupled with the idea of meritocracy. Academe screens the worthy and bestows credentials that, in turn, lead to worldly success. The embrace is coziest at the most selective institutions. After all, what better passport to achievement and reward could there be than an Ivy League degree?

The meritocratic ideal exercises a powerful grip on our collective imagination — and nowhere more so than at Harvard. When I was there, in the mid-1970s,

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