This document discusses the rise of meritocracy and inequality. It argues that the idea of meritocracy is used to justify growing inequalities, as resources are increasingly concentrated among a few based on measures of "merit" and "excellence". This is seen in higher education and research systems which are restructured according to rankings and quantitative evaluations. While metrics claim to measure quality, in reality they often only capture certain quantities. The document advocates for more diversity and risk-taking in research to enable disruptive discoveries, rather than focusing only on rewarding current "excellence".

1. MERITOCRACY, EVALUATION, EXCELLENCE:
THE CASE OF UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH
Francesco Sylos Labini

2. OUTLINE
• Inequalities and the meritocracy
• The case of higher education: the
«Harvard here» model
• The excellence dogma and its effect
on research
• Excellence and reality
• Research is risky
• Diversification and innovation

3. OUTLINE
• Inequalities and the meritocracy
• The case of higher education: the
«Harvard here» model
• The excellence dogma and its effect
on research
• Excellence and reality
• Research is risky
• Diversification and innovation

4. GINI INDEX
G=0 minimum
concentration: all
receive the same
income.
G=1 maximum
concentration: a single
person perceives the
whole country’s
income while everyone
else has zero income.

5. GINI INDEX
• In 2014 the 60 richest
people on the planet own in
total the same wealth of the
poorest 50% of the world
• In 2010 they were 388
persons

6. THE ERA OF INEQUALITIES
A Chief Executive Officer of a large US
company listed on the Stock Exchange
earns an average of about $11.4
million, which is about 343 times more
than the salary of one of his employees.
Despite the crisis, his earnings between
2009 and 2010 increased by 23 %.

7. The unspoken corollary
The poor and families
at risk of hardship
deserve to be poor
and at risk of hardship
because they are not
«good» enough.

8. WHY IS THIS EXTRAORDINARY
INEQUALITY IN WEALTH
ACCEPTABLE TODAY?
THE
MERITOCRACY:
THE IDEOLOGY
AT THE ROOTS
OF INEQUALITIES

9. THE AGE OF INEQUALITIES
«The rich and the poor
were always there. But
compared to the rest of
the population today,
riches are more numerous
than at any other time we
have memory»

10. THE DYNAMCIS UNDERLYING THE
FORMATION OF INEQUALTIES

11. THE DYNAMCIS UNDERLYING THE
FORMATION OF INEQUALTIES
“Whoever has will be given more,
and they will have an abundance.
Whoever does not have, even
what they have will be taken from
them”
Matthew 25:29

12. TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS: THEORY
• Trickle-down effect of wealth
dripping from top to bottom, by
reaching the poorest
segments of the population.
• The profits derived from
productive investments would
be reinvested to create jobs
and growth, by precisely the
effect of top-down dripping.

13. TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS: PRACTICE

14. THE DYSTOPIC SOCIETY
• The absurdity of a society where wealth
and power are distributed in accordance
with school performance or Intelligence
Quotients
• The caste that would derive bases its
legitimacy on intelligence tests and would
be even more closed and impermeable
than old castes which it replaces.
• In this society the market and
competition values would have
permeated every aspect of social life,
starting right from elementary education.

15. THE DYSTOPIC SOCIETY
• The selection focuses on a few measures
of educational excellence, increasing the
selection of those who do not conform to
the standards of intelligence defined as
“smarts”.
• Meritocracy in education would thus have
a dual role: on the one hand to represent
the basic criterion to select the most
efficient technicians needed for the society
and its economy, and on the other to
provide the moral justification for the
inequalities in the distribution of income
that necessarily are created.

16. The Rise of the Meritocracy
Merit –
Equal opportunities
Privilege

17. The Rise of the Meritocracy
Merit –
Equal opportunities
Privilege
“There is nothing as
unfair as making
equal parts among
unequals”
Don Milani

18. OUTLINE
• Inequalities and the meritocracy
• The case of higher education: the
«Harvard here» model
• The excellence dogma and its effect
on research
• Excellence and reality
• Research is risky
• Diversification and innovation

19. THE CASE OF EDUCATION AND RESEARCH
• The same symptoms, that is, concentration of resources in a few hands
and drastic reduction of the possibility of improvement for many, can be
found in the apex of the educational system, academia and scientific
research.
• These are the basis of the crisis of contemporary science because they
contribute to the stifling of scientific and cultural diversification, the
heart of innovation and economic development.

20. Measuring «Merit»
• Tests and rankings of all kinds in order to measure the
merit of both individuals (students, teachers, researchers,
etc.) and organizations (schools, universities, etc.) have
been introduced
• The basic idea of meritocracy is that it is possible to
establish a perfect rating of the quality of individuals
/organizations that leads to better use of their skills and
thus to greater efficiency of the individual and of the
system.
• However the “assessment of merit” is much more
complex than one might naively think…..

21. • The problem of quality assessing and measuring
has strong analogies with the problem of measuring
intelligence.
• As palaeontologist Stephen J. Gould highlighted, IQ
does not measure intelligence but only the ability
to quickly solve a number of problems of a
particular type. To measure intelligence reliably,
one should first define it unequivocally, but it is
highly questionable whether there is only one way
to do it.
• The same reasoning can be applied to measuring
the quality in education and research in its various
meanings among students, teachers, researchers,
institutions, etc.

22. Measuring
quantities and
not qualities
• The problem of quality assessing and measuring
has strong analogies with the problem of measuring
intelligence.
• As palaeontologist Stephen J. Gould highlighted, IQ
does not measure intelligence but only the ability
to quickly solve a number of problems of a
particular type. To measure intelligence reliably,
one should first define it unequivocally, but it is
highly questionable whether there is only one way
to do it.
• The same reasoning can be applied to measuring
the quality in education and research in its various
meanings among students, teachers, researchers,
institutions, etc.

23. Quantitative evaluation and big data
• The advent of big data has allowed us to
measure a series of quantities, in different
contexts, supposedly related with the merit, and
that therefore can be used to evaluate and
manage various educational systems, distribute
the funds, determine careers, etc.
• Quantitative evaluation is thus born and now
grows thanks to the availability of big data

24. The end of theory ?
The underlying philosophy by the
computer guru Chris Anderson
This is a world where massive amounts of
data and applied mathematics replace
every other tool….
Forget taxonomy, ontology, and
psychology. Who knows why people do
what they do? The point is they do it, and
we can track and measure it with
unprecedented fidelity. With enough data,
the numbers speak for themselves.

25. Evaluation:
a pseudo-science
• The availability of big data has given rise to
the emergence of a true pseudo-science that,
through the use of quality rankings, is
transforming education and research systems
all over the world.
• Its role is to reduce a complex problem,
essentially political in nature, concerning how
to organize schools, higher education and
research systems of a country, to a technical
one.
• A problem can be solved by finding the
optimal distribution of resources based on the
value of a particular set of quantitative
indicators invoked, arbitrarily, by some ad
hoc organizations.
• Same as in “pseudo-economics” ….

26. The ‘Harvard Here’ Model
 “Worldclass university as the panacea for ensuring
success in the global economy.
 Continuous evaluation of global capacity and potential
 To conform to indicators set by global rankings:
• governments and institutions make profound changes to their
higher education systems,
• alter their education programmes,
• privilege some disciplines and fields.

27. The excellence dogma
Evaluation
Meritocracy
Competition

28. Rankings of world
universities

29. RANKINGS OF
THE CHAMPION
LEAGUE

30. THAT’S
THE TRICK

31. Rankings of world
universities
BUDGET ! !

32. OPERATING EXPENSES
Operating expenses
Harvard+Yale
=
66 italian universities
Billions
of
Euros
Ordinary State
budget

33. THE ERA OF INEQUALITIES

34. WHAT YOU SPEND IS WHAT YOU
GET

35. WHAT YOU SPEND IS WHAT YOU
GET

36. OUTLINE
• Inequalities and the meritocracy
• The case of higher education: the
«Harvard here» model
• The excellence dogma and its effect
on research
• Excellence and reality
• Research is risky
• Diversification and innovation

37. EC research funding
 About 10% of National funding
 Imitation at the National level of the EC
“best practices”
 Top-down research lines
 Curiosity driven programs: ERC / Marie
Curie fellowships
Are these really “best practices”
for science?

39. Follow the money ….
Budget of the 7° Framework program
of the EC (2007-2013)
Millions
of
Euros
Given Obtained

40. FOLLOW THE
MONEY ….

41. The international crisis in scientific research
Increasing number of scientific articles but more rapid increasing
number of retractions
Increasing role of tecno-evaluation
Large number of PhD and Postdoc with low salaries and little
possibility of obtaining a permanent position
Small number of élite researchers

45. OUTLINE
• Inequalities and the meritocracy
• The case of higher education: the
«Harvard here» model
• The excellence dogma and its effect
on research
• Excellence and reality
• Research is risky
• Diversification and innovation

46. EVALUATING EVALUATION
• How to reward good and
promising research ?
• Which kind of selection?
• Which criteria?

47. LESSONS FROM
HISTORY

48. “REINFORCE EXCELLENCE, DYNAMISM AND
CREATIVITY OF EUROPEAN RESEARCH"
Rewarding what is today recognised
as excellence is trivial !

49. “ERC funds excellent researchers”

50. Two competing strategies
STRATEGY 1:
REWARD EXCELLENCE
STRATEGY 2:
ROOM FOR
FLUCTUATIONS

51. Some recent discoveries
Outsiders
Non mainstream
labs
Surprising results

52. High-temperature superconductivity
Nobel Prize in Physics 1987

53. SCANNING TUNNELING
MICROSCOPE
NOBEL PRIZE PHYSICS 1985

54. GIANT MAGNETO RESISTANCE
NOBEL PRIZE
PHYSICS 2007

55. GIANT MAGNETO RESISTANCE
NOBEL PRIZE PHYSICS 2007

56. GRAPHENE
NOBEL PRIZE PHYSICS 2010

58. REALITY AND
IDEOLOGY

59. OUTLINE
• Inequalities and the meritocracy
• The case of higher education: the
«Harvard here» model
• The excellence dogma and its effect
on research
• Excellence and reality
• Research is risky
• Diversification and innovation

60. RESEARCH IS
RISKY !

61. How can fluctuations emerge?

62. COMPETITION OF IDEAS
vs
COMPETITION OF RESEARCHERS
«The history of science has been and
must be a history of competing research
programmes ... the earlier the competition
begins, the better it is for progress»
Imre Lakatos (1970)

63. RESEARCH IS RISKY !
"We conclude that scientific impact
(as reflected by publications) is
only weakly limited by funding. We
suggest that funding strategies
that target diversity, rather than
“excellence”, are likely to prove to
be more productive.”

64. Investment in Education and Research
The key role of the visible hand
is to build the infrastructures that
are necessary (but not sufficient)
for the economic development

65. OUTLINE
• Inequalities and the meritocracy
• The case of higher education: the
«Harvard here» model
• The excellence dogma and its effect
on research
• Excellence and reality
• Research is risky
• Diversification and innovation

66. THE ERA OF INEQUALITIES:
consequences on education
Education, that in principle
should play the main role to
enable more efficient social
mobility, seems to have lost its
remediate power as a result of
increasingly insurmountable
inequality, signifying a crisis of
the whole education system.

67. THE ERA OF INEQUALITIES:
consequences on education
Parallel to the growth of inequalities, there
has been a breakdown in intergenerational
mobility: young people in the countries with
major imbalance in the distribution of wealth
have little chance of improving their
situation.

68. The Scientific Competitiveness of Nations
• Beyond having the largest production
of scientific papers and the largest
number of citations, do not specialize
in few scientific domains. Rather, they
diversify as much as possible their
research system
• Diversification is the key element that
correlates with scientific and
technological competitiveness

69. Diversification and competitiveness
• Diversification correlates with
competitiveness
• As in biological systems,
diversification achieves long-term
stability and competitiveness in a
changing environment such as the
present globalised world

70. The exponential growth

71. THE INVISIBLE HAND IS VISIBLE
AND WORKING HARD !

72. “Science can be effective in the national
welfare only as a member of a team,
whether the conditions be peace or war.
But without scientific progress no amount of
achievement in other direction can insure
our health, prosperity and security as a
nation in the modern world”.
Science The Endless Frontier
A Report to the President
by Vannevar Bush
July 1945

73. Risk in research
and innovation
• Diversification
• Adaptability
• Cooperation
• Long times

76. Discussion

77. The rise of the
cultural hegemony
of the meritocracy

78. “There is a class
struggle going on, it
is true, but it is my
class, the rich class,
that is waging the
war, and we are
winning.”
Warren Buffett

79. The illusion from the 1980s
«For thirty years we have turned the pursuit
of material self-interest into a virtue... Much
of what appears ‘natural’ today dates from
the 1980s: the obsession with wealth
creation, the cult of privatisation and the
private sector, the growing disparities
between rich and poor… And above all, the
rhetoric that accompanies all this: the
uncritical admiration for free markets,
the contempt for the public sector, the
illusion of endless growth»
Tony Judt

80. THE ROOTS OF
THE HEGEMONY

81. Culture
Media
Politics
THE ROOTS OF THE
HEGEMONY

82. The cultural hegemony
Neoclassical economic theory:
economics is conceived as a
science that studies the alternative
choices of scarce resources, and
the market is the place of optimal
allocation of resources,
guaranteed by rational agents able
to use all the available information
conveyed by prices, which measure
the scarcity of such resources.

83. The market would “naturally” find
an equilibrium that is the
meeting point between supply
and demand, according to a
process that is exclusively logical-
deductive and therefore totally
independent from the diversities
among economies in time and
space.
The cultural hegemony

84. Politics is subject to
markets, acting at most in
a technocratic form in
order to facilitate their
functioning.
The cultural hegemony

87. The classical economics
Economics as a scientific
reflection on the society, aimed at
examining the characteristics that
ensure the conditions of
development on the basis of
division of labour, in a social,
institutional and regulatory
context that constrains the role
and actions of the various parties
in time and space.

88. Beyond the different versions and
insights the vision of political economy
remains anchored to a representation
of the economic system in which the
size of the social classes and the
diversity of interests determine a
basically unstable structure
The cultural hegemony

89. Natural science
and
social science
• Laws of Nature:
universal and
immutable
• Laws of
Economics:
changeable and
mutable

92. NEOCLASSICAL
ECONOMICS IS A
PSEUDOSCIENCE

93. We need a cultural
(and a political)
revolution….