Without a doubt, the dominant belief regarding individual success in this country has long been that those who are smart, get a good education, and work hard will be successful. Often overlooked is the importance of inequality within the opportunity structure that favors certain groups. I don’t deny that there are success stories from people of all social backgrounds. Nor is my intention to suggest that wealthy white heterosexual men are not smart and did not work hard for what they have. The key is that there are hurdles in our society that are quite large and sometimes impossible to leap over for some, but small or non-existent for others. In other words, some people have nearly impossible odds to enter the vaulted 1% while others have nearly impossible odds not to enter into or remain in that elite category.
Last week, Mitt Romney suggested that the recently raised profile of income inequality is “about envy” and “class warfare.” Regardless of party affiliations, these statements must assault your intelligence if you have any knowledge about the structure of the education system in our country. The idea that the U.S. is a full-blown meritocracy is at the center of Mr. Romney’s comments and the debate over income inequality as a whole.
Let’s take a few moments to review some facts about Mitt Romney’s youth. His father was a wealthy and well-connected man: CEO at American Motors Company (AMC), Governor of Michigan, a presidential candidate, and eventually a member of Richard Nixon’s cabinet. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney was able to attend a private prep school, which in the present day has an endowment that rivals smaller state schools and is nearly one-quarter the size of the endowment for the entire University of Alabama system. From there, he attended Stanford and BYU for undergraduate and a joint law and business professional program at Harvard. Mitt Romney was clearly blessed with an elite and expensive education.
But is it realistic to think that he got there solely on intelligence and hard work? Or do issues of differential opportunities by social class contribute to Mr. Romney’s success story?
First, the issue of private prep schools. A number of scholars have documented the upper class pipeline of elite prep schools, such as the one Romney attended. Research suggests that these schools have an extraordinary track record of graduates’ eventual placement in elite positions of power. It’s no surprise that 3 of our last 4 presidents attended one of these schools. Although these schools have offered more scholarships in recent decades to increase social class diversity, the overwhelming majority still come from privileged social backgrounds.
Additionally, research shows that there are massive disparities in who goes to the most elite universities. If intelligence and merit were randomly distributed across the social class spectrum and the U.S. were a true meritocracy, we would expect that 25% of students enrolled at the most elite universities would come from the top 25% of the income distribution, just as 25% would come from the bottom 25% of the income distribution. However, the truth is that data from the past two decades suggest that nearly 80% of the students enrolled in elite universities like Stanford, Harvard, and Yale come from the top 25% of the income distribution. Only 5% of students come from the bottom 50% of the income distribution at these schools.
The most unfortunate part of this “meritocratic” process is that the advantages and disadvantages afforded to individuals through the system are compounded over time, both within and across generations. Let’s consider a hypothetical correlate to Mitt Romney named John Smith. John is just as intelligent and hard working as Mitt but his father was not a CEO, governor, presidential candidate, or cabinet member. John’s family can’t afford an elite prep school and the scholarship slots are so few and the applicants so many that he misses the cut based on statistical probability and luck rather than merit. Thus, as opportunities close for John at the high school level, such as attending an underfunded high school instead of an elite prep school, the opportunities at higher education levels slip further out of his reach. Although John goes on to obtain a community college degree, works hard for his family, and hopes for a better life for his children, how can the children of John Smith compete with the children of the Mitt Romneys of our society? From the second these children are born into their respective families, their opportunity structures are completely different. How do merit and envy explain that?
To read more on education and meritocracy, check out:
Bills, David B. 2004. The Sociology of Education and Work. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Cookson, Peter W., and Caroline Hodges Persell. 1985. Preparing for Power: America’s Elite Boarding Schools. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Domhoff, G. William. 1967. Who Rules America? Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Kham, Shamus Rahman. 2010. Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
McDonough, Patricia M. 1997. Choosing Colleges: How Social Class and Schools Structure Opportunity. State University of New York Press.
Soares, Joseph A. 2007. The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Stevens, Mitchell L. 2009. Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
