Academic meritocracy is not academic fairness

When academics apply for promotions, they know that the answer might be, “Thank you, but wait another year or two to apply”. Both academic applicants and promotion committee members seem to believe that decisions are fair while the promotion process remains opaque (despite calls for clear matrices and transparency).

That is, they believe that decisions are based on merit, manifested in factors such as quality and quantity of publications and success in procuring external funding. Yet in the modern, neoliberal university, managers neglect the systematic barriers faced by individuals with various oppressed axes of identity.

Meritocracy seems fair because it subjects every academic’s accomplishments to the same level of scrutiny. However, academics who come from academic families – largely white and wealthy – are 25 times more likely than the general population to have a parent with a PhD, as a study published last week confirmed. These second- or third-generation academics are likely to have absorbed the basics of how to be successful academics before they even start graduate school, saving them valuable time and energy that they are able to devote to directly demonstrating their merits instead.

Being on secure, permanent contracts also makes individuals better able to enhance their merits. Able-bodied academics can travel to conferences to present their work and establish networks with other leading scholars. Cisgender and heterosexual academics rarely have to deal with transphobic and homophobic discourses and treatments at their workplace in the name of freedom of expression. Academic freedom offers greater protection to white academics, who also do not face the double whammy in promotion and pay gaps.

Privileged academics also accrue more recognisable prestige because others who share similar privileges might be more willing to recognise them and their work as worthy of esteem. This support further enhances their prestige, creating a virtuous cycle of prestige factors.

Contrariwise, the less privileged face a cumulative cycle of disadvantages. They must prove their merits in institutions designed to knock them down and keep them out. They lack the privilege to avoid low-prestige, unpaid labour that does not enable them to demonstrate merit. For example, many women academics of colour serve as mentors, particularly for students of colour. This labour is crucial to addressing the heavy under-representation of racial minorities in most Western higher education sectors, yet it is largely unallocated in workload models and, thus, remains institutionally undervalued.

Similarly, a higher proportion of women academics carry caring responsibilities than men do, limiting their ability to fulfil the expectations on academics to travel abroad for conferences to promote their work, exchange scholarly ideas and establish professional networks. The pandemic only worsened these inequalities as women spent significantly more time on household chores and caring responsibilities than men did.

Meanwhile, fixed-term teaching staff carry the heavy weight of teaching; 75 per cent of US faculty are adjuncts. Not only are they hired to teach, they are also expected to develop teaching programmes and curricula, supervise and mentor students, advise student clubs, and conduct research – the last of which is the key to promotion. Moreover, fixed-term teaching staff hold precarious positions, putting their physical and mental health under constant challenge as they are confronted with cost-of-living and housing crises, constraining their academic achievements.

All these examples illustrate that meritocracy exacerbates pre-existing inequalities. The commonly assumed “level playing field” is not so level after all. Universities do not promote solely on the basis of true ability: privilege also plays a significant role.

Thus, I call for the higher education sector to move away from undifferentiated systems of performance evaluation, which treat everyone with absolute superficial equality. Structural barriers need to be examined to understand how minoritised academics can be included and lifted. Only that way will they have the genuine opportunity to rise from the bottom of the academic hierarchy on the basis of their true merits.

Shan-Jan Sarah Liu is senior lecturer in gender and politics at the University of Edinburgh.