Wang, Haoyuan;
(2025)
An internal defence of educational meritocracy.
Masters thesis (M.Phil.Stud), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Meritocratic distribution is a common way of allocating formal education at higher levels. But is it morally defensible? In this paper, I propose a new argument (‘internal account’) for the meritocratic distribution, which differs from the typical defence based on social efficiency or a theory of individual desert. The key idea is that edu-cational goods should be distributed according to one of education’s intrinsic aims—promoting individuals’ self-development. “Merit”, properly understood, is a way of tracking this feature. The paper is built on a methodology for identifying the appropriate distributive crite-ria according to the distributive context. Following Michael Walzer, I argue for se-lecting ‘core’ guiding criteria according to the ‘internal logic’ of distribution in par-ticular spheres. Merit, for its relevance to the intrinsic aim of education, can be seen as the core criterion of the sphere of education. I also develop Dewey’s ‘growth’ theory as an appropriate account of the intrinsic aim of education. I define merit as a conception based on the ‘growth’ theory: Merit is what enables an individual to gain growth from the process of education. Hence, dis-tributing educational resources according to one’s merits ensures that one can genu-inely benefit from the resources given to her. In other words, meritocratic distribution guarantees the realization of the intrinsic educational goal, i.e., the development of an individual. Furthermore, though meritocracy is usually thought of as in tension with egalitarian-ism, the internal account of meritocracy is not necessarily inconsistent with the re-quirements of social equality. The paper also compares the internal account of meri-tocracy with the traditional account of meritocracy by referring to three different types of social-egalitarian proposals: the fair equality of opportunity principle, the adequacy principle and the prioritarian principle. I conclude that the internal account can better accommodate some core claims made by these proposals.
| Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | M.Phil.Stud |
| Title: | An internal defence of educational meritocracy |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10206110 |
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