Lani Guinier on Democratic vs testocratic merit

Harvard Law Professor Lani Guinier is chiefly remembered for being unceremoniously dropped by Bill Clinton as his pick for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Indeed, he described her views as 'undemocratic' and 'hard to defend'.

She has published a book championing 'democratic' against 'testocratic' merit.

The following is from an interview with Insider Higher Education 

Q: What is the difference between democratic merit and testocratic merit and why does this difference matter?-

A: Democratic merit is the form of merit that views higher education, at least partially, as a public good. As such, admissions criteria to colleges and universities should continuously be reassessed for the degree to which they help the institution and its constituents to make present and future contributions to society, that is, our democracy.

Why only the admissions criteria? Why not periodically reassess everything about the college or university? Rather than giving professors tenure, why not force them to reapply for their positions on a yearly basis? Similarly, let every Department and every Course prove it has fully incorporated recent discoveries and innovations and answers to current conditions.

Why should we just assume that Physics Degrees should cover the work of people like Newton and Einstein but not that of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi- a person of color who taught people how to levitate?

Why make a distinction between institutions of Higher Learning and Fast Food franchises? Would it not be more democratic to consider four years spent flipping burgers for McDonalds to be just as prestigious as four years at Ivy League? Similarly, why make an invidious distinction between a ten year stretch in the Penal system and ten years spent at Princeton spent researching String Theory?

Democratic merit is something which should be decided democratically. If the majority of people in a State believe that Darwin was wrong and that Homosexuality is caused by Jews in the Entertainment industry, should Universities not inculcate these views?

Democratic merit does what our current meritocracy fails to do: it creates a system that incentivizes individuals who serve the goals and contribute to the conditions of a thriving democracy for both their own good as well as for the collective good.

The collective good should, in a democracy, be decided collectively. Forcing Universities to reflect the views of the majority may 'contribute to the conditions of a thriving democracy' in the opinion of that majority. It may hold that people with minority traits should commit suicide and it may wish Universities to inculcate feelings of shame and despair in such people.

Guinier may believe that the majority of people in the U.S share her own views. But this has not been the case in the past and may not be in the future.

Consider what happened in India. At first quotas were only for the most marginalized or oppressed. Now almost every social grouping wants or has a quota. Democratic politics has not improved the quality of education nor created secure employment opportunities in the organised sector for the vast majority. Instead, there are quotas which create the illusion that one has a chance in a lottery for Government jobs.

Granting these individuals educational access, regardless of their supposed possession of abstractly measured and individualized “talent,” is what will contribute to the creation of higher-level problem solving. 

The assumption here is that Universities inculcate skills in 'higher-level problem solving'. This may be true of Guinier's own College. It was not true of the now defunct Trump University. Yet America has elected Trump president. Can we really be sure that 'Democratic merit', as judged by elected leaders in a Democracy, will coincide with genuine merit when it comes to solving complex problems?

There is a quite separate issue which has to do with predicting the outcome of education and training on different young people. The people who design tests may have conscious or unconsciously biases. Furthermore, existing inequities may cause such biased testing to have superior predictive power. However, this means that there is a market opportunity. Someone can make money by training the discriminated against group and employing them in higher value added work while paying a lower wage.

Testocratic merit makes the assumption that test scores are the best evidence of applicants’ worth, without paying much attention to the environments in which one finds those individuals. It thereby ignores several built-in biases that privilege those who are already quite advantaged. And it ignores those who could make a valuable contribution to the institution but who have not been the beneficiaries of the privileges of those who may test higher -- including growing up in thriving neighborhoods and homes, attending well-equipped and funded schools, having tutoring and other extra help. 

So long as there is money, or some other benefit, in solving genuine problems an incentive exists to ignore biased tests and find talent where it is cheapest- i.e. in the discriminated against group.

By its nature, Higher Education, at its best, will require aptitude and application of an uncommon sort in the same way that Competitive Sports can only provide livelihoods for a small section of the population. If talent is randomly distributed and poorer people have lower transfer earnings, we would predict that discriminated against groups would be over-represented in precisely those branches of Higher Education which produce epistemic merit goods.

We should not and do not value either Higher Education or Competitive Sports as the main method of promoting literacy or physical fitness for the great mass of the population. Merit is irrelevant. We want even a lazy child to be able to read and write and run and catch a ball.

Guinier believes otherwise-

If our society truly values education as a means of preparing citizens to participate in the decisions that affect their lives as individuals and the society they create as a collective, as well as to enable individuals to improve their lots and their society, then we need to reexamine exactly how we define merit. 

If education 'prepares citizens' in the manner she specifies, then we want all to have it and those without 'merit' to have more of it so as to compensate for their lack of aptitude or motivation.

It is a different matter that Terence Tao should get scholarships and grants to fund his study of Mathematics whereas I should get nothing, because Tao is capable of making great advances in that discipline whereas, even with the best instruction, I'd accomplish nothing.

There are bound to be many undiscovered Taos even in an affluent country like America. But the economic incentive exists to find these prodigies and invest in their education and training.

We can alter how we think about merit, from something a child is born with to something that she (and/or we) can help cultivate.

Once the economic incentive exists to locate merit, the incentive to cultivate it arises as well. What is then required is the institution of affordable and effective means of cultivation.

The thing can work the other way as well. Academic Credentials can serve as signalling or screening devices which Industry can use to segment the population for its own purposes. However, Economic theory suggests that allocative inefficiency may result.

We can shift from prioritizing individualized testing to group collaboration among all stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers and administrators.

Group collaboration is costly. 'Stakeholders' may be ill informed. At 16, I didn't know what sorts of Maths I'd need to be an Economist. Nor did my parents. Nor did the administrators of the LSE where I studied. But some of my teachers did have informed opinions about this. Industry, however, had the final say. Only those applications which could pay for themselves in the real world burgeoned. The pure work underlying these applications attracted funding and smart people from other disciplines. Stuff which didn't pay for itself might survive in corners of the Academy but had to drop standards to attract students.

Guinier does not appear to be serious about 'group collaboration'. The thing can't be implemented in a systematic manner such that the outcomes would be robustly beneficial. This is not because of hysteresis- i.e. inherited habits- but because the thing is pie-in-the-sky.

Unfortunately, it’s not going to be easy, as the entire undergirding of our educational system rests upon notions of individual achievement and the promotion of competition. But somehow we must shift from promoting testocratic merit, which has produced dubious results, to developing democratic merit, because the latter is the foundation upon which our national values truly ought to rest.

The existing Higher Education system has produced good Doctors and Scientists and so forth. The Canadian School system seems pretty good- but can the same be said of poorer Districts in America?

The mania for Testing can damage Educational outcomes. We need to trust and respect teachers and pay them a decent wage and give them opportunities to develop professionally.

Getting a few more kids from the ghetto into Ivy League may be good for the Ivy League but what's good for the elite isn't necessarily good for Society.