The Education Industry’s Power to Strengthen or Corrupt Meritocracy
“Education… is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery” — Horace Mann
As a society, we pin our hopes on education. Our innate human desire for social mobility, the dream of achieving anything we set our mind to regardless of circumstance, often depends on the great equalizer: education. More specifically, our dreams are tied to meritocratic education, where individuals are rewarded on the basis of merit, regardless of race, language, or religion. However, the validity of our hopes and the sanctity of meritocracy may be threatened by the education industry and its growing power.
If life were a race, meritocracy would be intently staring at the finishing line, giving out medals to whoever crosses it first. However, meritocracy would be oblivious toward racers who were given a head start or racers forced to tie weights to their legs. In short, meritocracy objectively assesses outcomes but ignores inequity in opportunities and starting points. While the image of a person succeeding against all odds may sound romantic, we should strive to be a society where such stories need not exist. After all, for every inspiring story of success in spite of circumstance, there exist many more stories of ‘failure’ caused by circumstance.
How can we strive to be such a society? We could try to equalize the playing field or at the very least, prevent it from becoming more unequal. Our success in this quest would determine whether meritocracy remains protected as the foundation of our hopes or gets corrupted, becoming a mask that hides society’s underlying inequities. Herein lies the education industry’s power.
Unfortunately, there are growing sectors in the education industry that contribute to inequality of opportunities. Not too long ago, I was knee-deep in the university admissions process. At that time, I came to know about the college prep industry. These companies offered free talks on admissions and free diagnostic tests, which I benefited from. However, you would quickly hit a paywall. With teams of Ivy League or Oxbridge students and alumni, standardized test perfect scorers, and previous admissions committee members from top colleges, they sell you the hope of getting into your dream university. These hopes are not unfounded, as shown by the statistics of past clients’ admission rates and testimonies that my inbox gets bombarded with. The paywalls, however, are tough to scale for the average family. Packages start at a couple of thousands of dollars and can go upwards of $10,000.
Sitting in one of those free seminars (also known as the top of the company’s sales funnel), I was surprised by the number of students Grade 10 and below, accompanied by enthusiastic parents. It sounds absurd, but some of these companies help to organize internships, overseas volunteer trips, put them in touch with industry professionals, advise them on which extracurriculars to pursue, working with them from an early age just to boost their portfolio and increase the odds of getting into their desired college.
Is there anything inherently wrong with that? Maybe not. They are charging premium prices for a high-quality service demanded by the market, and both parties involved in the transaction are happy. However, the implications of such activities in the long term don’t look pretty. As a whole, the industry is effectively creating a more unequal playing field by providing significant advantages to those who are able and willing to fork out high fees. In other words, they change education’s status from being the great equalizer to the great divider.
Nevertheless, there is still hope. I am not trying to vilify the for-profit education industry. In fact, I believe that it could support our quest for more equal opportunities. In 2018, I launched Munbank, a financially sustainable initiative that aims to democratize access to Model United Nations (MUN) and its benefits. Through Munbank, I have organised biannual international online MUN conferences. Thus far, we have reached youth from more than 25 countries, overcoming financial and geographical barriers to the MUN experience.
There is room for for-profit companies to generate great financial returns while increasing access to high quality and affordable education. A quick look at the booming Edtech sector would provide you with many positive examples of companies that treat social and financial goals as equally important. In fact, such companies can often scale faster and produce a larger impact compared to nonprofits as they are not constrained by altruistic donations or goodwill.
It is evident that the education industry holds immense power: it can increase accessibility or exclusivity of opportunities, and thus preserve or destroy the hopes society has pinned onto meritocracy. If the playing field for the next generation of students becomes increasingly unequal, we would soon see the creation of a new meritocratic elite. This elite class is intergenerational, as they provide their offspring with a huge advantage in the meritocratic race. Worst of all, the mask of meritocracy may cause them to believe that their social or economic status is deserved, a belief that even the oligarchs and autocrats of old would not dare to hold. Therefore, we need to actively shape the industry to ensure that it becomes a positive rather than a negative force in our society.
This was first written as an op-ed for the Zeta Institute, a youth-led think tank.
