Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?

This was Michael Young’s point in 1958, calling attention to the effects of the tripartite secondary education system in the UK at time. The tripartite system distinguished pupils by ability—tested by an examination—at an early age, elevating those who were admitted to high-status grammar schools, and severely limiting the opportunities for higher education of everyone else.

See e.g. the UK government policy statement Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential (2017): https://​assets.​publishing.​service.​gov.​uk/​government/​uploads/​system/​uploads/​attachment_​data/​file/​667690/​Social_​Mobility_​Action_​Plan_​-_​for_​printing.​pdf

See e.g. https://​www.​mckinsey.​com/​featured-insights/​future-of-work/​retraining-and-reskilling-workers-in-the-age-of-automation#

He borrows this terminology from Case and Deaton, op.cit.

Ibid.

See David Goodhart (2019), Head, Hand, Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21^st Century (Penguin, 2020), ch. 1.

Goodhart op.cit. pp. 13–14 is better than Sandel on the mixed make-up of the elite: “Not everyone can be a winner, however you design the game. In some fields such as law, medicine, technology, and some corners of business, ‘winner takes all’ markets have provided exceptional rewards to exceptional people – people like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk – who have both high cognitive skills and practical knowledge of something that gives them a big first mover advantage in new digital markets. Below them is a wider group of highly educated, and highly credentialized, people from top universities who have the intelligence and personality attributes to propel them into the top layer of jobs. Another level down is what one might call the rank and file of the cognitive class, the mass elite. These are people who have, in recent years, been directed into the expanded higher education sector by parents, teachers, financial incentives and, too often, by the lack of other post-school options (at least in the UK and US). In the UK there are now more graduates than non-graduates among the under-thirties. Many have earned valuable qualifications and launched successful professional careers; too many others find themselves with degrees of little value in jobs with only school leaver cognitive requirements (and student debts to pay off).