Merit and Difference

Using the arguments over college admissions as a point of departure, this article analyzes the idea of merit in education. Situating the concept of merit historically and philosophically, it advances the argument that merit should be considered not as an individual construct but as an institutional one. The debates over merit focus on which individual abilities should be privileged in college admissions. But the author argues the merit does not—indeed, cannot—exist outside the institutions that use it. The article suggests that it may be counterproductive for educators to insist upon an individual basis for merit, even when it is linked to furthering emancipatory goals. In other words, the predominant definitions of merit privilege an idea of the individual that itself should be questioned for how it justifies the institutional practices that create difference, practices that ensure that such an idea never materializes in fact.