The Meritocracy Trap

by Daniel Markovits

  The income/achievement gaps on the SAT: For a visualization of these data, see Zachary Goldfarb, “These Four Charts Show the SAT Favors Rich, Educated Families,” Washington Post, March 5, 2014, accessed November 18, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/03/05/these-four-charts-show-how-the-sat-favors-the-rich-educated-families/. Hereafter cited as Goldfarb, “These Four Charts Show the SAT Favors Rich, Educated Families.” See also Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, “How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do About It,” in Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College, ed. Richard D. Kahlenberg (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2010). Hereafter cited as Carnevale and Strohl, “How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality.” The charts are constructed from the College Board’s own data, located at “2013 College-Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile Report,” College Board, http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2013/TotalGroup-2013.pdf.

  For the income percentiles, see Carmen DeNavas-Walt and Bernadette D. Proctor, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports no. P60-249 (September 2014), 23, Table A-1, www2.census.gov/library/publications/2014/demographics/p60-249.pdf, and “Historical Income Tables: Households,” U.S. Census Bureau, last revised August 28, 2018, Table H-1, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html. For the education percentiles, see Camille L. Ryan and Julie Siebens, Educational Attainment in the United States: 2009, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports no. P60-566 (February 2012), 6, Table 1, accessed December 30, 2018, www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-566.pdf [inactive].

  In each case, these gaps: These are rough fractions only because eliteness combines parents’ incomes and educations and because the College Board reports percentiles only for each section of the test and not for overall scores. To arrive at the top and bottom quarter claim, take mean scores for income and educational achievement in the highest and lowest categories that the College Board reports and calculate percentiles for each section of the test, and then average these percentiles.

  As recently as the late 1990s: The College Board began reporting SAT scores specifically for students from narrowly elite households—with incomes exceeding $200,000—only in 2008, making precise comparisons between present-day and past data difficult. But rougher income categories remain revealing, and as recently as 1996 the gap between the SAT scores of children from households whose income exceeded $100,000 and the scores of children from households whose income fell between $40,000 and $60,000 was 104 points while the score gap between the middle-class children and children from households whose incomes were less than $20,000 was 121 points. These numbers are calculated using the College Board’s Total Group Profile Reports, which list scores by family income for each year between 1996 and 2016. They 2016 gaps exclude the scores on the writing section, which was not included in the 1996 test, in order to render scores comparable across the two years. “1996 College-Bound Seniors: A Profile of SAT Program Test Takers,” College Board, https://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/archived/cb-seniors-1996; “2016 College-Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile Report,” College Board, https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/total-group-2016.pdf. For a visualization of similar data from 2011, see Pink, “How to Predict.”

  fully 250 points less than rich students: Goldfarb, “These Four Charts Show the SAT Favors Rich, Educated Families”; “2013 College-Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile Report.” The middle-class students come from households with annual incomes between $40,000 and $60,000, the poor students from households with annual incomes below $20,000, and the rich students from households with annual incomes above $200,000.

  Defining the rich, the middle-class, and the poor according to the categories used in the 1996 data, the 2016 gap between the rich and the middle class had grown to 116 points and the gap between middle-class and poor children had fallen to 95 points. The relationship between the rich/middle-class and the middle-class/poor gaps therefore reversed over the two decades.

  whose parents have completed graduate school: Goldfarb, “These Four Charts Show the SAT Favors Rich, Educated Families”; “2013 College-Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile Report.” See also Carnevale and Strohl, “How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality.”

  a parent with a graduate degree: Murray, Coming Apart, 67. The data Murray reports are otherwise unpublished, though provided to him by the College Board. Children from households in the broader elite are similarly overrepresented among the larger class of high-achieving (but not exceptionally so) high school graduate. According to one recent study, households from the top quarter of the income distribution account for twice the share of high school graduates with SAT scores in the 90th percentile or higher and A-minus GPAs as households in the bottom quarter of the distribution, and nearly one and a half times the share of these high-achieving graduates as households in the middle two quarters. Caroline M. Hoxby and Christopher Avery, “The Missing ‘One-Offs’: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students,” NBER Working Paper No. 18586 (2012), www.nber.org/papers/w18586.pdf. Hereafter cited as Hoxby and Avery, “The Missing ‘One-Offs.’”

  The College Board has established its own benchmark for college readiness, by determining the lowest SAT score associated with a 65 percent or greater chance of earning a B-minus average or higher in the first year of college. Using this benchmark, the College Board determined that just 15 percent of students whose parents had less than a high school education and 27 percent of students whose parents had a high school education met the benchmark, compared with 33 percent of students whose parents held an associated degree, 52 percent of students whose parents had a bachelor’s degree, and 68 percent of students whose parents held a graduate degree. Jeffrey Wyatt et al., SAT Benchmarks: Development of a College Readiness Benchmark and Its Relationship to Secondary and Postsecondary School Performance, College Board (2011), 22, Table 6, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED521173.pdf.

  97 percent of its graduates to college: For income in Scarsdale, see “QuickFacts, Scarsdale Village, New York,” U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/RHI105210/3665431. For college attendance rate, see “Scarsdale High School, 2015–2016 Profile,” Scarsdale Schools, www.scarsdaleschools.k12.ny.us/cms/lib/NY01001205/Centricity/Domain/89/2016%20-%202017%20Profile.pdf.

  Nor is Scarsdale High exceptional among rich schools. To pick another example, River High School in Clarksville, Maryland (median annual household income $120,000), sends 98 percent of its graduates to college. For a discussion of Clarksville’s education statistics, see Ted Mellnik and Carol Morello, “Washington: A World Apart,” Washington Post, November 9, 2013, accessed November 18, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2013/11/09/washington-a-world-apart/. Hereafter cited as Mellnik and Morello, “Washington: A World Apart.” For data on River High School, see “River High School: Profile,” Howard County Public School System, 2017–2018, www.hcpss.org/f/schools/profiles/prof_hs_riverhill.pdf. The examples may be further multiplied. Weston High School in Connecticut, with median household income of $218,152, sends over 95 percent of its graduates to college. “Weston High School: 2016 Profile for College Applications,” Weston Public Schools, www.westonps.org/uploaded/Color_print_-_WHS_2016_Profile.pdf; “QuickFacts: Weston town, Fairfield County, Connecticut,” U.S. Census Bureau, 2016, www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/0900183430,00. Darien High School, also in Connecticut, with median household income over $200,000, again sends roughly 95 percent of its graduates to college. “Darien High School: 2018–2019 Profile,” Darien Public Schools, www.darienps.org/uploaded/content/schools/dhs/guidance/Profile_2018-19.pdf?1537444361189; “QuickFacts: Darien town, Fairfield County, Connecticut,” U.S. Census Bureau, 2016, www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/0900118850,0900183430,00.

  The top twenty private high schools: Raquel
Laneri, “America’s Best Prep Schools,” Forbes, April 29, 2010, accessed November 18, 2018, www.forbes.com/2010/04/29/best-prep-schools-2010-opinions-private-education.html#4760df665027.

  These schools send: Fieldston’s class of 2013, for example, sent 40 (out of 150) graduates to the Ivy League alone and 104 (or 69 percent) to universities of colleges ranked in the top twenty-five in their categories by U.S. News & World Report. See www.ecfs.org/admissions/college-destination/index.aspx [inactive]. Fieldston’s class of 2014 sent 28 (out of 150) graduates to the Ivy League alone and roughly 100 to universities or colleges ranked in the top twenty-five in their categories by U.S. News & World Report. Ethical Cultural Fieldston School, “Build NYC Resource Corporation,” Statement, April 30, 2015, www.nycedc.com/sites/default/files/filemanager/Official_Statements/Ethical_Culture_Fieldston_School_Project_Series_2015.pdf. Graduates of St. Paul’s School are more likely to attend Harvard than any other college, and 80 percent attend a college ranked among the top thirty by U.S. News & World Report. Austin Bramwell, “Top of the Class,” American Conservative, March 13, 2012, accessed November 18, 2018, www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/top-of-the-class/.

  For further discussion, see David Chung, “Top High Schools Find Admissions Success,” Brown Daily Herald, April 27 2011, accessed November 18, 2018, www.browndailyherald.com/2011/04/27/top-high-schools-find-admissions-success/. Chung reports that Harvard-Westlake School and Phillips Academy each sent more than 45 graduates to Brown from 2006 to 2010; the “Collegiate School in New York City has sent 39.6 percent of its graduates in the past five years to universities falling under the “Ivy Plus” umbrella—the eight Ivy League universities, as well as Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology”; and Trinity School in Manhattan matriculated 37.3 percent to “Ivy Plus” universities between 2006 and 2010.

  Colleges overall are not: Caroline M. Hoxby, “The Changing Selectivity of American Colleges,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 23, no. 4 (Fall 2009). Hereafter cited as Hoxby, “Changing Selectivity.”

  two generations ago: See admissions rates reported in Chapter 2.

  at these elite colleges: The Harvard Crimson notes that “one out of every 20 Harvard Freshmen attended one of the seven high schools most represented in the class of 2017—Boston Latin, Phillips Academy Andover, Stuyvesant High School, Nobel and Greenough School, Phillips Exeter Academy, Trinity School in New York City, and Lexington High School.” More generally, 6 percent of students came from the ten most represented schools and 32 percent of students came from the 11 percent most represented schools. Meg P. Bernhard, “The Making of a Harvard Feeder School,” Harvard Crimson, December 13, 2013, www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/13/making-harvard-feeder-schools/.

  the most prestigious colleges in the country: At Yale, for example, 44 percent of students come from formally private high schools and hence from families with the incomes needed to support private schooling. Oriana Tang, “The Practical Path: Socioeconomic Class and Academics at Yale,” Yale Daily News, April 29, 2016, https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/04/29/the-practical-path-socioeconomic-class-and-academics-at-yale/. Moreover, in a typical recent year, 197 high schools provided Yale with one-third of its class. Email communication from Yale Office of Admissions, on file with author.

  to 32 percent in 2011: Suzanne Mettler, Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 21. For top-quartile families, in 1970, 40 percent of twenty-four-year-olds had college degrees; by 2011 that number was 71 percent. For bottom-quartile families, the shares went up much less, from 6 percent to 10 percent. Another similar visualization and discussion of this data can be found in Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States: 2018 Historical Trend Report (2018), 99, http://pellinstitute.org/downloads/publications-Indicators_of_Higher_Education_Equity_in_the_US_2018_Historical_Trend_Report.pdf, and in Catherine Rampell, “Data Reveal a Rise in College Degrees Among Americans,” New York Times, June 12, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/education/a-sharp-rise-in-americans-with-college-degrees.html.

  between 1980 and 2010: Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, “Gains and Gaps: Changing Inequality in U.S. College Entry and Completion,” NBER Working Paper No. 17633 (2011), 7, www.nber.org/papers/w17633.pdf.

  all the way up the income distribution: Raj Chetty et al., “Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility,” American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 104, no. 5 (2014): 141–47.

  The effect of parental income: The most dramatic difference is reported by Suzanne Mettler, who claims that whereas in 1970, just 55 percent of enrolled students from the top income quartile completed their degrees by age twenty-four, fully 97 percent get BAs by age twenty-four today and adds, by contrast, that the completion rates for students from the next three quartiles—who generally come to college less well prepared, enjoy less family support while in college, and attend colleges that provide students with less institutional support—remain much lower, at 51, 26, and 23 percent respectively. Mettler, Degrees of Inequality, 25. Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States: 45 Year Trend Report (2015), 33, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED555865.pdf, data showed that in 2015 the completion rates by income quartile (from top to bottom) are 99, 51, 29, and 21 percent respectively.

  The fact that universities integrate and organize their training into a BA degree—which renders completing college distinctively more valuable than taking some classes and then dropping out—increases the cost of dropping out and further exacerbates the contribution that universities make to educational inequality. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the income boost that a completed BA gives relative to having had “some college” education is 14.5 times the income boost that “some college” gives relative to having a high school education only. “Unemployment Rates and Earnings by Educational Attainment, 2017,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, last modified March, 27, 2018, www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm.

  Taken together, these effects: Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States: 2018 Historical Trend Report (2018), 99, http://pellinstitute.org/downloads/publications-Indicators_of_Higher_Education_Equity_in_the_US_2018_Historical_Trend_Report.pdf.

  nearly double what it was in 1970: In “Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education,” Liberal Education 95, no. 3 (Summer 2009), Peter Sacks cites a paper published online in 2008 by Thomas G. Mortenson, in no. 143 of his newsletter Postsecondary Education Opportunity, which is no longer available. The article reports that in 1970, 40 percent of high school graduates from the top quartile received a BA by age twenty-four, compared to an average of about 13 percent from the middle two quartiles. By 2002, the share from the top quartile had risen to 51 percent, while the average share from the middle two quartiles had risen to about 20 percent. For further discussion, see Florencia Torche, “Is a College Degree Sill the Great Equalizer? Intergeneration Mobility Across Levels of Schooling in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 3 (2011): 763–807.

  approaches the 80th percentile: Raj Chetty et al., “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, no. 4 (2014): 1584.

  highly selective colleges: Sean F. Reardon, Rachel Baker, and Daniel Klasik, Race, Income, and Enrollment Patterns in Highly Selective Colleges: 1982–2004, Center for Education and Policy Analysis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2012), 8, Figure 3; Reardon, “No Rich Child Left Behind.”

  from the bottom quarter: These shares are for students entering college born in the years from 1979 to 1982. Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski,
“Inequality in Postsecondary Education,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, ed. Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011), 120, Figure 6.2.

  Also available at www.russellsage.org/sites/default/files/Duncan_Murnane_Tables_Figures.pdf. Bailey and Dynarski report that among this birth cohort 80 percent of people from households in the top quarter, about 54 percent from the middle half, and 29 percent from the bottom quarter enroll in college. The shares of enrollees reported in the main text are computed using these numbers.

  meritocracy’s early, democratic years: The shares of people in the 1961 to 1964 birth cohorts to enroll in college, by household income quartile, were 58 percent, 38 percent, 32 percent, and 19 percent. Bailey and Dynarski, “Inequality in Postsecondary Education,” 121. This means that for the later birth cohort, the top/bottom-quartile gap in college enrollment rates was 51 percent while for the earlier birth cohort it was just 39 percent.

  The shares of all bachelor’s degrees: Karin Fischer, “Engine of Inequality,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 17, 2017, https://studentsuccess.unc.edu/files/2016/01/Engine-of-Inequality-The-Chronicle-of-Higher-Education.pdf.