Merit and Moral Desert

The last of a 3-part series on scholarships and equity.

“This place is built upon the fantasy of meritocracy”
– Professor Pierre Portal, 2024 College of Science Associate Dean

In previous posts, I’ve outlined why we need to care more about equity. But as my Tuckwell Scholar friend points out, the bar may be higher for those who had more access to opportunity. If someone still met that bar, shouldn’t they equally deserve consideration?

Maybe, maybe not. I’ll explain why I disagree; this essay makes the case for prioritising equity over merit.

The idea that someone who works hard deserves recognition is foundational to our meritocracy. Unfortunately, this remains an aspirational ideal, because the distribution of talent is morally arbitrary. Achievement at the highest levels require a level of talent in addition to effort; that is, you can’t do well at maths olympiad if you have no talent in maths. But just like your height or eye colour, the talents you were born with were outside of your control. I’m sure everyone worked hard to earn their accomplishments, but their talents were due to chance. It’s a matter of luck to be born smart in a world that prizes intelligence just as much as being born pretty in a world that values beauty.

Moreover, the selection process is a binary decision, but it’s tremendously difficult to assess the merit of someone’s life. The difference between a 99.90 and 99.80 is how much sleep you got the night before your exams, or what questions you happened to be asked. And as we all know, test scores don’t always reflect either effort or ability. You might have prepared for the wrong essay stimulus, or had a harsher marker, or naturally find the subject more challenging. Furthermore, your education is influenced by chance factors such as how caring or passionate your teachers are, even if we properly account for educational advantage. All in all, I’m inclined to believe that many who got an ATAR above a scholarship cutoff didn’t just work hard; they also got lucky.

Making a holistic decision is even more difficult, because judgments of a human life are inherently subjective. How much more noteworthy is volunteering internationally compared to winning a sports championship? By what yardstick do we measure someone’s personality? But just like that, 17 years of someone’s life is distilled into an assessment of their worth. Among a pool of exceptional candidates, the result might hinge on the stories about yourself you choose to share, or how nervous you felt in an interview. It will certainly depend on a deeply subjective evaluation of your life. But those who make the cut get a golden ticket, and many others just as talented narrowly miss out.

Even if we consider achievement in context, luck seems to play an uncomfortably big role. If that’s true, then we need to reevaluate what the role of a scholarship program should be – not to reward achievement, but to compensate for disadvantage.

When we allocate scholarships, we allocate resources that could’ve been used to improve students’ lives. Maybe through giving mental health training to RMs, or for free breakfast at BKSS, or to hire more tutors for over-enrolled courses. This is the opportunity cost, and we have to ask if this is the best available use of money.

Unfortunately, I don’t think merit scholarships are. I know people who got tapped by their lecturer to tutor their course, work at places that reimburse their tuition, and started uni with a $60/hr coaching gig. Heck, this all happened to me. Society already rewards merit heavily, and they rarely need our help.

Obviously, the same cannot be said when we select on the basis of need. Some can’t attend ANU due to rolling snake eyes in the lottery of birth. For others, financial assistance may be the reason they complete their degrees. When there are people who drop out because they can’t afford uni, we have a clear moral imperative to support them.

Unless there’s overlap, every dollar spent on merit scholarships could be better spent helping someone who needs it more. Every single dollar. In an ideal world, merit scholarships wouldn’t exist.

If you hold a merit scholarship and feel a bit defensive reading this, I completely understand. I know how you try to make the most of the opportunities you’re given, and how you strive to excel. I know that your scholarship might mean a lot to you. It feels liberating to be financially independent and not have to work for money, and empowering to be told that you hold unusual promise. I have no doubt that you do.

All I’m saying is that your achievements, no matter how extraordinary, do not give you a moral claim to resources that could go towards those who struggle to afford university. Not even if you got a perfect ATAR, won an Olympiad, or competed at the Youth Olympics. You should be proud, but we will create a fairer university by allocating resources on the basis of need.