Word: merit
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Selection at the right tail--the central issue of the book--is fraught with difficulties and contradictions. What, first of all, ought to be the objective of selection? To say that universities ought to select the "best" possible students is nothing but a platitude. How should merit be defined? As Klitgaard points out, at universities today "merit" is not simply confined to academic merit as measured by grades and test scores. Leadership, motivation, and diversity of background and race are all among the criteria schools consider in selecting their members...
...kind of success we are most interested in fostering? Because this type cannot be predicted adequately, Klitgaard seems to say, let's ignore it. Yet this seems self-defeating, as we may then be forced to reward people for the wrong reasons according to some unfair standard of academic "merit" whereby some members of society have unequal advantages...
...excessive devotion to a flawed method of selection in order to select an elite class based on the wrong principles Klitgaard aptly quotes psychologis David McClelland on this point: the testing movement is in grave danger of perpetuating a mythological meritocracy in which none of the measures of merit bears a significant demonstrable validity with respect to any measures outside the charmed circle...
...about 77% of the initial prime contracts have gone to areas represented by eight Congressmen and 14 Senators. "At this rate," says Richard Garwin, a critic of SDI and a noted IBM physicist, "the program will soon have such momentum that there'll be no stopping it, regardless of merit." Says former Chief Arms Control Negotiator Paul Warnke: "What's happening is the rapid conversion of the President's Star Wars proposal from stardust and moonbeams to the great pork barrel...
Although he said that the University "takes all these things seriously." Martin Michelson, a lawyer in the General Council's Office, said that Jackson's case "has little merit...