♪♪ Scott: In his recent book, "The Tyranny of Merit," Professor Michael Sandel calls credentialism "the last acceptable prejudice."

Professor Sandel joins us today to discuss the impact of our assumptions on how society picks winners and losers, and it drives its politics.

Professor Sandel, what makes credentialism the last acceptable prejudice?

Michael: Well, first, Scott, good to be with you.

In recent decades, the divide between winners and losers has been deepening, poisoning our politics, sending us apart.

This has partly to do with the widening inequalities of income and wealth, but it has also to do with changing attitudes toward success that have accompanied the rising inequality.

Those who have landed on top have come to believe that their success is their own doing, the measure of their merit, and that those who fall short have no one to blame, but themselves.

This is the harsh side of the meritocratic idea, which connects with having credentials- the idea that if chances are equal, if everyone has an equal chance to become credentialed, then the winners must deserve their winnings.

But this, I think, has... has been demoralizing for those left behind.

It's created a kind of hubris among credentialed elites, and we need to face that squarely and consider its implications, Scott, for our politics.

Scott: You know, when you speak of that, it hearkens back to a comment that former President Obama created a firestorm about, when he talked about, at one point, that those who sat at the top of the economic and success food chain stood on top of infrastructure, educational opportunities, and a whole host of other things.

Is that, uh- The reaction that he got from that, in terms of "No, I made it myself.

How dare you say that?"

Does that go to the heart of what you just said?

Michael: It does.

In that much discussed comment, President Obama was trying to get us to reflect on the... the indebtedness that all of us have to those who make our achievements possible, including those who are the most successful.

The problem is that the- what I call the "tyranny of merit" has coincided with the time when we are more accepting of inequalities, because we've persuaded ourselves that, somehow, these inequalities track merit credentials.

And the result is that the successful, those who land on top, begin to inhale too deeply of their own success.

They forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way, and I think President Obama was trying to remind people that, when he said- This was the contentious part of that quote, Scott, when he said, you remember, um, "You didn't build it," referring to, say, a successful business.

And this led people to say, "What do you mean?

I worked hard."

He was trying to draw attention to our sense of indebtedness.

Scott: Well, and you talk a lot about sense of community in the book and how, at... at a certain level, we've lost the... the assumption that there is a common good... Michael: Yeah.

Scott: ...and that people benefit from the existence and the inclusiveness of that common good.

You speak early in the- your- uh, the paperback... uh, uh, edition of the book about the pandemic and the impacts, and you state the following.

"Those who reap the economic bounty of global markets, supply chains and capital flows have come to rely less and less on their fellow citizens as producers, or as consumers.

As the winners of globalization pulled away from the losers, they practiced their own kind of social distancing.

The political divide that mattered, the winners explained, was no longer left versus right, but open versus closed."

Can you expand on that a... a bit and... and bring us into that, in terms of exactly what the implications of that is?

Michael: Yes.

This goes back, really, to the past four decades, Scott, of the version of neoliberal finance-driven globalization that mainstream politicians of both parties embraced.

And they told us that everyone, in the end, will benefit, but what we s- But that turned out not to be true.

We... we saw from most working people, the past four decades brought stagnant wages, in real terms, growing inequality, job outsourcing.

But what the mainstream parties offered, in response to this wage stagnation and inequality, was some bracing advice.

They said, "If you want to compete and win in the global economy, go to college..." Scott: "Get more educated!"

Michael: "What you earn will depend on what you learn.

You can make it if you try!"

In the book, I called this the "rhetoric of rising," that, "You, too, can rise, if only you get a college degree."

There was a problem, though.

The elites who offered this bracing advice missed the insult implicit in it.

The insult was this- If you didn't go to college and if you're struggling in the new economy, your failure must be your fault.

That was the insult.

And the insult stung and generated resentment, especially when we consider the fact that most people, after all, do not have a four-year college degree.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans don't.

So, it's folly to create an economy that sets, as a necessary condition of dignified work and a decent life, a four-year degree that most people don't have.

And this has led, I think, to a lot of the resentment that roils our politics today.

Scott: Well, you point out in the book- You... you go to exactly that set of facts.

70% of us- around that, plus-minus- don't have college degrees, yet in Congress, a hundred percent of the senators and some ex- astronomical number- I thought you quoted 95%... Michael: 95%.

Scott: ...of Congress persons all have college degrees, yet 70% of us don't.

And so, you have one type of individual, that are... are somewhat- despite their diversity- somewhat homogeneous in their makeup, governing a lot of people who- their life experiences are totally different.

How did we get to this place?

Michael: Well, this is one of the central challenges for politics today.

One of the deepest divides in American politics is now between those with and those without a four-year college degree.

We saw this in the election of Donald Trump in 2016, when there was a big divide between, uh, uh- educational, uh, divisions, in terms of the support.

You remember, after one primary election victory, he said, "I love the poorly educated."

He knew that he was drawing from people, uh, largely without- in... in large measure, not exclusively- without a college degree.

What's interesting is that, traditionally, the Democratic Party was the party of working people... Scott: Yes.

Michael: ...and represented working people against privileged elites and the wealthy.

But in the 2000s, and by 2016, and today, the Democratic Party was more identified with the professional classes, with the college-educated classes, people with advanced degrees, in the interest and outlook and values they promoted.

And working people, in large numbers, had become alienated from the Democratic Party.

Scott: Yes.

Michael: And this has happened also in Britain with the Labour Party, in France and Germany with the Social Democratic Parties.

There's been this kind of flip, where center-left parties had become the parties of educated elites and had lost the confidence of working people, and this may have something to do with the fact that these parties have not done very much about inequality over the past four decades.

Scott: I...

I want to pause on... on that particular point and go a little bit deeper... Michael: Yeah.

Scott: ...because this flip of the educated moving over to the Democrats and those working-class folks, particularly, the white working class moving over to the Republican side of the political equation is noteworthy, within itself.

But you, uh, you almost come across, in the book, as having a special criticism of the progressive left in that, for instance, in... in going back to President Obama's administration, you talk about the... the credentials in the second part of his administration, that almost two-thirds of his cabinet secretaries had all graduated from- it... it was either the Ivy League or... or three institutions in the Ivy League.

And an observation has been made that when President Trump was elected, he put in a lot of people that horrified the chattering classes in this country.

At the same time, it also opened a door to say, "Well, you know, maybe a... a guy or gal like me could actually serve in an administration like that because we're not locked out by the iron triangle of the Ivies."

Any reaction to that?

Michael: Well, I...

I think it's true that the Obama administration and the Clinton administration, before that- speaking of Democrats- did buy into a kind of meritocratic hubris.

They were enamored of meritocratic credentials and Ivy League credentials, and this reflected the changing... the changing electoral base.

And this led them, I think, to neglect, to some degree, working people.

Now, it must be said that in the case of Trump, he exploited the resentments of working people, having partly to do with race and immigration, but also having to do with the sense, among... among many working people, that credentialed elites were looking down on them.

He was... he was very good at exploiting this collec- this... this, uh, aggregate of grievances.

Now, when he entered office, he did not govern- speaking, now, of President Trump- He did not govern in... in ways that did very much for the working-class voters who supported him, and the people he appointed to his cabinet were elites of a different kind.

Many of them were wealthy elites, millionaire and billionaire elites, but who did not have the kind- uh, many of them- the kind of Ivy League imprimatur that Democratic presidents had reached for.

So, uh, Trump turned out to be a kind of plutocratic populist.

During the elections, he appealed- made populous appeals to working people, channeled the anger against elites, against the credentialed classes, but he governed in ways that actually gave massive tax cuts to businesses and to the wealthy.

And the challenge, then, for... for the Democratic Party and for progressive parties, generally, in democracies is to figure out how to speak again for working people, rather than simply to embrace the kind of credentialist, meritocratic prejudices that had narrowed the base of center-left parties.

And the key to that in- uh, is, I think, to shift focus to the dignity of work.

What would it mean to renew the dignity of work, to make life better for everyone who contributes to the economy and to the society?

Not only those with advanced degrees, Scott.

Scott: Well, you... you talk about returning a dignity to work, and implicit within that is the dignity to work that doesn't necessarily require a four-year degree... Michael: Right.

Scott: ...or advanced credentialism.

At the same time, though, how is it that, without opening up the doors and really democratizing their leadership- and... and I speak on both parties, but we've been focused in this conversation, the last few minutes, on the Democrats- If they don't diversify their leadership- not just from a ethnic, gender orientation perspective, but from a class perspective- how can that conversation have any legitimacy that leads to action?

Michael: This is a great question, and a really important question.

The answer is they can't.

They do need to broaden their leadership.

Uh, you mentioned earlier, uh, as I point out in the book, that, uh, Americans without a college degree are almost absent from Congress, from state legislatures.

People with a working-class background- Working... working people, according to the, uh, labor department, uh, occupy about half the jobs in the United States.

The percentage of people with working-class backgrounds in Congress- 2%.

In state legislatures- 3%.

Uh, talking about the Democratic Party- uh, and here, I think your point is so important- Joe Biden was the first Democratic presidential nominee in 36 years without an Ivy League degree.

That should tell us something, and one thing it should tell us is that the Democratic Party- both parties- but the Democratic Party, which traditionally stood for working people, for those who... who need help, uh, is against powerful corporations and... and... and the privileged, need to broaden the participation in the party and in its leadership ranks, um, in... in ways that, uh, go to questions of class that we have really ignored in... in recent decades.

Scott: Because it... it does seem like, uh, Michael, that we have replaced Western European sort of 18th century aristocracy... Michael: Right.

Scott: ...with a new aristocracy in the form of credentialism and meritocracy, that just is old wine in new wineskins, whether we choose to admit it or not.

Michael: Right.

It... it's... it's interesting.

Meritocracy came on the scene as a seeming alternative to aristocratic hereditary privilege.

In a meritocracy, no one was stuck in the class of their birth.

The accident of birth would no longer matter.

What would matter would be effort, hard work, and talent.

That would be the basis of rising.

So, meritocracy, at first, seemed like a liberating ideal, an alternative to hereditary rule.

But what's happened is that affluent parents have figured out how to pass their privileges onto their kids, not by bequeathing them vast estates and trust funds only- or mainly, but by equipping them with the resources they need to compete effectively for admission to top colleges and universities.

Scott: In... in fact, you actually use someone who used to live in the region that we're in today, the Sacramento region, uh, Mr. Singer, who was the lead actor in the, uh, college admission scandal, as an example of the desperation and lengths that parents will go to, in order to bequeath their existing privilege onto their children and pass the luster of those exclusive universities.

What does that say about the reality versus the promise of opportunity, that you can rise from the bottom to the top, in 21st century America?

Michael: Well, it's true.

There was this college admission scandal by this... this character, Mr. Singer, and that was outright corruption, where he was misrepresenting the scores and the athletic prowess of the young people he was hired to, uh, to get into top colleges.

But the real scandal, and the deeper, more insidious corruption is what goes on, not by... not by fraudulent schemes, but in the normal course of the competition for college admission.

If you look at the, uh- If you look at Ivy League and top- uh, the... the most elite, most competitive universities- the Stanfords and Harvards, Princeton and Yale- the percentage of kids at- in these places who come from families in the top 1% is greater than the percentage of kids from families in the entire bottom half of the country, combined.

And this is even with generous financial aid policies.

If you look at the top hundred most competitive colleges and universities, most of the students there come from well-off families, 70%.

The percent who attend these places from low-income backgrounds- bottom 25% of the income scale- 3%.

3% only.

So, the meritocracy that we have created is almost as hereditary, in the way it passes along privilege through the generations, as the old feudal aristocracy that we thought it replaced, which should be, I think, a reason to reconsider the system that we've created, for allocating opportunity, for allocating income and wealth, and also for allocating social esteem and respect.

Scott: You talk about that in the book, about how colleges preside over the system on how modern society allocates opportunity.

Now, uh, people who are watching us have this discussion are going to ask this question, so I've got to ask it to you.

You sit, Michael, in the belly of the beast itself... Michael: I do.

Scott: ...at Harvard university.

How do you reconcile your observations with the fact that you... you are them, in some ways, because of the perch that you sit in?

Michael: Right.

Well, I plead guilty.

That is fair enough.

And all I can say is that I see this up close, and what strikes me, Scott, is that the tyranny of merit, uh, in... inflicts its burden in two directions.

We've been talking about the unfairness of the system to those who lose out, to those who do not have the same opportunities to compete and win in the global economy.

That's one problem.

But the tyranny of merit also inflicts an injury on the so-called "winners," because what we've done, what affluent parents have done, is to convert the adolescent years of our young people, our children, into a kind of meritocratic tournament, a stress-strewn, anxiety-laden, uh, uh, field of pressure to achieve.

And... and that means to get- to... to take SAT prep courses, and to take all of these AP exams, and all of the internships in distant places doing good work to bolster the college resume.

This takes a toll on young people, including those who survive and succeed and prevail in the competition.

And I see, in my students, coming to your question about being in the belly of the beast, it takes a toll on the emotional and psychological well-being of these young people, uh, because the habit of hoop-jumping is hard to break.

And so, by the time one prevails by winning admission to one of these places, it isn't so easy to step back and to reflect and to figure out what's worth caring about, and why- what path of study, what career is worthy of me?

- because the question is, "What... what hoop do I jump next?"

And so, turning universities and colleges into- I call them- "sorting machines" for a market-driven meritocratic society not only leaves a great many people behind- that's one problem- it also distorts- I would say, even, corrupts the intrinsic purpose, the educational mission that we should be focused on, instead of, uh, essentially being a sorting machine dispensing credentials in a meritocratic tournament.

That's one of the things that worries me about the... the direction higher education has taken, Scott.

Scott: Mmhmm.

Well, I think that we'll leave it there.

The book, again, is "The Tyranny of Merit" by Michael Sandel.

Professor Sandel, thanks for joining us today.

Michael: Thank you, Scott.

Scott: And that's our show.

Thanks, again, to our guest and thank you for watching Studio Sacramento.

I'm Scott Syphax.

See you next time right here on KVIE.

♪♪ ♪♪ Scott Syphax: All episodes of Studio Sacramento, along with other KVIE programs, are available to watch online at kvie.org/video.