Does meritocracy exist in higher education?
At a glance, higher education institutions would appear to be the perfect place for leadership positions to be given to individuals based on their knowledge, qualifications, and talents rather than their social class, privilege or race.
In tart of the mandate of higher education institutions is to bestow qualifications on students based on their abilities to meet clearly defined criteria within a given qualification. Thus, policies are often created within institutions of higher learning which set out quantifiable criteria for the appointment of leaders at various levels within these institutions.
Therefore, these policies create a paradigm for how activities should be undertaken within institutions, as quantifiable metrics such as academic publications or qualifications are given most of the weight when employing leaders in academic institutions as opposed to other less quantifiable measures such as integrity, communication, and self-awareness. This however creates a problem for how positions of influence are allocated to individuals, as these other non-quantifiable important characteristics of leaders are often overlooked in favour of quantifiable metrics.
As a result, new young academics are often solely focused on improving themselves in these quantifiable metrics. Moreover, senior academics tend to focus their direct academic staff development solely on these criteria thus leaving the non-quantifiable metrics to be underdeveloped. Thus, what often arises is that leaders are appointed who meet all the required areas of merit as per the academic policy but lack important personal non-quantifiable characteristics to be effective in their role.
In non-academic organisations, non-quantifiable metrics are given an equal weighting when compared to quantifiable metrics thus making the process relatively balanced. Effective leaders within non-academic institutions are usually those that have already developed in both areas, quantifiable and non-quantifiable before they assume positions of influence.
Thus, the problem that arises is not that the system of appointing leaders in academic institutions is wrong, but rather that the metrics that are used to appoint these leaders should be expanded to include other, less quantifiable metrics. This would help young academics to have a dual focus when improving their abilities so that they become better academics and leaders.
In my own journey I have found myself making mistakes in leadership because of my lack of focus on developing the non-quantifiable areas which are equally important to who I become as a person, a leader and an academic. Thus, I suggest that the question is not does meritocracy exist in higher education institutions, but the question that needs to be answered is how we define merit in higher education institutions.
