Meritocracy may be conceptualized as a state in which social goods are distributed in correspondence with the effort or merit displayed by an individual. Personal deservingness is thus not determined by demographic or structural factors such as ethnicity, gender, class, or family. Meritocracy thus awards individual efforts and ability. Meritocratic notions are common among Australians especially when it comes to occupational and educational participation of the youth (Smith & Skrbiš, 2017) . However, McNamee and Miller challenge the cogency of this ubiquitously held perception by positing that there is a gap between people's perspective of how systems work and the reality of the matter. According to them, this gap is the meritocracy myth – the misconception that systems distribute resources, particularly income and wealth per the efforts that an individual puts in. McNamee and Miller’s argument against meritocracy is two-pronged. First, they espouse that even though merit dictates who gets what, its influence on economic outcomes is significantly overemphasized. Additionally, they recognize various non-merit factors that negate, neutralize, or suppress the effects of merit and impede an individual’s upward mobility.
Non-merit factors can be conceptualized as attributes that exclusively relate to social or personal traits or characteristics that are not inherently related to the efficient performance of one's duties. According to McNamee and Miller (2018), various social forces can potentially negate the impact of merit in people's attempts to have an edge. These forces act as deterrents and tend to make people stagnate in the positions they already occupy notwithstanding how much effort they put. One of the most recognized non-merit factors is inheritance which effectively confers class placement in early life (Mcnamee & Miller, 2018) . Inheritance is a major basis of inequality as it sets people apart from the outset of things. Accordingly, those born in opulence are better placed than those born in poverty as the latter have a larger deficit to overcome to be at par with their fortunate counterparts. Inheritance dictates a host of other factors including access to quality education, healthier lifestyles, and opportunities to cultivate merit. Inheritance also defines an individual’s cultural and social capital which are good indicators of upward mobility.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Education is also a key determinant of where people end up (Mcnamee & Miller, 2018) . Averagely, more educated persons have more wealth and income. Additionally, stratification of education based on social class is evident. Arguably, the most recognized non-merit impediment to achievement is discrimination (Mcnamee & Miller, 2018) . Sexual and racial discrimination have been identified as some of the most serious forms of prejudice. In many societies, minority races are discriminated against socially and economically limiting their chances to compete favorably with persons of the dominant race. Historically, females have also had to struggle to carve out their space in a male-dominated world (Autopia, 2019) . Individuals can also be discriminated against based on physical disability not related to the capacity to work, age, religion, region, physical appearance, and sexual orientation. While many other forms of discrimination are not appropriately acknowledged due to their subtlety, they have profound effects on individual merit and life chances. For instance, location can be a basis of social inequality as those in urban areas are likely to have more access to opportunities to better themselves that those in rural or remote settlements.
In Australia, more than half of the undergraduate students are females (Winchester & Browning, 2015) . Nonetheless, there still are significant gender disparities in the enrolment patterns of students to institutions of higher learning. A majority of female undergraduate students in Australia major in the fields of education and health sciences (excluding medicine) (Harrington & Pratt, 2019) . On the contrary, about eighty-five percent of students pursuing engineering, information technology, and related courses are men. It is thus apparent that females are disproportionately concentrated in arts, humanities, social sciences, and nursing, unlike their male counterparts who predominate the more prestigious technology and engineering courses (Harrington & Pratt, 2019) . The gravity of such huge disparities is accentuated by the fact that the courses pursued by women have fewer job opportunities, fewer income expectations, and questionable security. Moreover, they are the cheapest to study. Studies have also found that a significant percentage of females of lower socioeconomic status believe that the high costs for pursuing university education make furthering their studies impossible (Harrington & Pratt, 2019) . A smaller percentage of men shared similar sentiments. However, gender disparities among persons of higher socioeconomic carders in Australia are less apparent.
In Australia, there is an inextricable link between racism and the history of early settlers and immigrants. While the country’s education system advocates for inclusive education, elements of racial exclusion are still evident. Rural settlements house a significant chunk of Australia’s indigenous community (Ford, 2013) . Consequently, the educational problems clouding these remote areas disproportionately impact the Aborigines. However, this population is also significantly affected by racial discrimination as compared to the Anglo-Saxon community (Fahd & Venkatraman, 2019) . Research findings indicate that a majority of indigenous Australian students report most of their racist experiences in the school setting (Mansouri & Jenkins, 2010) . Additionally, Aboriginal children have been reported to have higher school dropout rates than their white counterparts (Vass, 2014) . Therefore, their chances for achieving upward social mobility is limited. Racial discrimination, especially in education thus limits the opportunities of the minority in Australia with potentially serious consequences including lifelong poverty.
Like in many other countries, the Australian education system disadvantages persons from lower social classes. Despite the government’s attempts to bridge this gap, various aspects of socioeconomic status make the matter more complex. These aspects include parent occupation, parent education, and income, all of which are independent determinants of school literacy achievement. Studies have shown that persons from low socioeconomic backgrounds in Australia grapple with many educational problems. At the individual level, such problems include unconducive learning environments, poor school attendance due to financial constraints, and school mobility (Marks, Cresswell, & Ainley, 2006) . Moreover, the educational system in Australia and many other countries is stratified such that the wealthy have access to the best quality education while the poor have limited access to such prestige. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds also face school-related problems including lack of adequate teaching material, high staff turnover rates and thus the suboptimal quality of education. The socioeconomically disadvantaged child in Australia is not only more prone to suffering these conditions but is also affected more adversely as compares to the more advantaged child.
Even though there is much to be valued in rural education, studies have revealed that isolation and location are important indicators for an additional need for the provision of education in Australia. Foremost, schools in rural and remote areas in Australia reportedly experience many disadvantages including low teacher retention rates, limited facilities, and less appropriate curriculum (Glover & Walstab, 2014) . Studies have also shown that the percentage of students in rural areas that meet educational requirements at every milestone is significantly lower than for the general population in Australia (Mitchell Institute, 2017) . Moreover, children living in rural areas are not likely to catch up with their counterparts in less remote areas of the countries once they veer off track. It has also been shown that students in remote and rural areas lack adequate access to education services. As a result, they do not attend school as frequently as their counterparts in metropolitan areas and are thus likely not to further their education (Mitchell Institute, 2017) . In most cases, those who make it to university have been reported to drop out upon enrolment. As such, children in rural areas are likely to be stuck in a vicious cycle of downward social mobility.
According to Basil Bernstein, the social conditioning of language has a bearing on education outcomes. A study by Buckingham et al. (2013) found that children from lower socioeconomic classes in Australia were more likely to become poor readers as compared to their peers from advantaged backgrounds. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu also theorizes that members of upper classes and the rich have better cultural capital which helps them to perform better in their school work (Nash, 1990) . A study by Gale and Parker (2016) revealed that the less-advantaged undergraduate students in Australia have comparatively high dropout rates due to cultural capital disparities. The retention of slow socioeconomic status students in the higher education system is thus low and students are somewhat set up to fail (Gale & Parker, 2016). While education in Australia is presented as a tool to enable the less fortunate in Australia to attain merit, the socioeconomic disparities seen in its education systems are proof of the fact that meritocracy is a fallacy (Wiederkehr, Bonnot, Krauth-Gruber, & Darnon, 2015) . Just as McNamee and Miller, Bowles and Gintis challenge the meritocracy of education and describe it as a system that duplicates socioeconomic inequalities (Van Zanten, 2005) .
Overall, the education system in Australia proves the argument that meritocracy is a myth. As evidenced by research, various non-merit factors negate the upward mobility of certain groups in the Australian education system. Gender disparity in education is one of the most evident non-merit factors. Though more than their male counterparts, female undergraduate students are concentrated in courses that are less likely to be well-paying in the future. Location is also presented as a non-merit factor as children in rural Australian areas are less-advantaged in terms of access to education as compared to their peers in urban settings. Racial discrimination also mars the Australian education system as the Aborigines are more prone to dropping out than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. Additionally, socioeconomic factors contribute to major educational disadvantages among the less-advantaged Australians. Therefore, it can be inferred that the Australian education system is proof of the impracticability of meritocracy.
References
Autopia. (2019). Rethinking merit: Why the meritocracy is failing Australia. Retrieved October 18, 2019, from Unwomen.org.au website: https://unwomen.org.au/resource/rethinking-merit-why-the-meritocracy-is-failing-australia/
Buckingham, J., Wheldall, K., & Beaman-Wheldall, R. (2013). Why poor children are more likely to become poor readers: The school years. Australian Journal of Education , 57 (3), 190–213. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004944113495500
Crawford, K. (2010). Schooling, Citizenship and the Myth of the Meritocracy. Citizenship, Social and Economics Education , 9 (1), 3–13. https://doi.org/10.2304/csee.2010.9.1.3
Fahd, K., & Venkatraman, S. (2019). Racial Inclusion in Education: An Australian Context. Economies , 7 (2), 27. https://doi.org/10.3390/economies7020027
Ford, M. (2013). Achievement gaps in Australia: what NAPLAN reveals about education inequality in Australia. Race Ethnicity and Education , 16 (1), 80–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2011.645570
Gale, T., & Parker, S. (2016). Retaining students in Australian higher education: cultural capital, field distinction. European Educational Research Journal , 16 (1), 80–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904116678004
Glover, S., & Walstab, A. (2014). Educational Disadvantage and Regional and Rural Schools . Retrieved from https://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1228&context=research_conference
Harrington, K., & Pratt, A. (2019). How Far Have We Come? Gender Disparities in the Australian Higher Education System – Parliament of Australia. Retrieved October 18, 2019, from Aph.gov.au website: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/cib0203/03CIB31#undergrad
Mansouri, F., & Jenkins, L. (2010). Schools as Sites of Race Relations and Intercultural Tension. Australian Journal of Teacher Education , 35 (7). https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2010v35n7.8
Marks, G. N., Cresswell, J., & Ainley, J. (2006). Explaining socioeconomic inequalities in student achievement: The role of home and school factors. Educational Research and Evaluation , 12 (2), 105–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803610600587040
Mcnamee, S. J., & Miller, R. (2018). The Meritocracy Myth. (4th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
Mitchell Institute. (2017, February 9). Young people in rural and remote communities frequently missing out - Mitchell Institute. Retrieved from Mitchell Institute website: http://www.mitchellinstitute.org.au/fact-sheets/young-people-in-rural-and-remote-communities-frequently-missing-out/
Nash, R. (1990). Bourdieu on Education and Social and Cultural Reproduction. British Journal of Sociology of Education , 11 (4), 431–447. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142569900110405
Smith, J. F., & Skrbiš, Z. (2017). A social inequality of motivation? The relationship between beliefs about academic success and young people’s educational attainment. British Educational Research Journal , 43 (3), 441–465. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3272
Van Zanten, A. (2005). New Modes of Reproducing Social Inequality in Education: the changing role of parents, teachers, schools and educational policies. European Educational Research Journal , 4 (3), 155. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2005.4.3.1
Vass, G. (2014). Putting critical race theory to work in Australian education research: ‘we are with the garden hose here.’ The Australian Educational Researcher , 42 (3), 371–394. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-014-0160-1
Wiederkehr, V., Bonnot, V., Krauth-Gruber, S., & Darnon, C. (2015). Belief in School Meritocracy as a System-Justifying Tool for Low-Status Students. Frontiers in Psychology , 6 .
Winchester, H. P. M., & Browning, L. (2015). Gender equality in academia: a critical reflection. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management , 37 (3), 269–281. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080x.2015.1034427
