Meritocracy? RI and overseas uni examples.....
Click HERE for some background first on how meritocracy is creating problems for Singapore....then look at the following examples for proof of how indeed, meritocracy is widening instead of narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor today..
The essence of the argument here is that given two students born of the same intelligence level, the one from the richer family is more likely to succeed in life compared from the one from the poorer family, reason being that the richer one is able to benefit from the resources and network of his family to do better academically, enabling him to enter a top school which can continue to provide the better resources and environment for him to excel even further academically.....while the richer student is studying for he exams, the poorer one could probably be working part time to help out the family, in which case his studies will inevitably suffer even though he is of the same intelligence level].....then when it comes to two students with the same good 'A' level results, it is the richer one who is able to go overseas to Ox-bridge as his parents can afford to pay for it, whereas the poorer one has to suffice with a local university i.e. NTU/NUS which is still pretty respectable (NUS is ranked right up there ok! Don't play play....) but we gotta admit it's not quite in the same league in terms of prestige when compared to your Ox-bridge and the Ivy League unis......The kind of people you meet there, the opportunities for internships with prestigious MNCs, and the overseas work opportunities upon graduation is also something that local unis cannot match.....
So there you go, it has become a hard fact that all things being equal, the financial background of the family can affect the kind of grades you get in schools, and the kind of schools you go to, which can then affect the kind of grades you go on to get in schools, the unis you g to, and eventually the kind of jobs you get, and which income group you get slotted into in future.....Reckon, it s no always such a neat, linear equation, but our emphasis on meritocracy (i.e. grades) is reinforcing this phenomenon....
1) degree-seekers-fly-overseas-for-an-edge
2) raffles-institution-now-a-middle-class-school-says-principal
3) a-hard-look-at-averting-elitism
The essence of the argument here is that given two students born of the same intelligence level, the one from the richer family is more likely to succeed in life compared from the one from the poorer family, reason being that the richer one is able to benefit from the resources and network of his family to do better academically, enabling him to enter a top school which can continue to provide the better resources and environment for him to excel even further academically.....while the richer student is studying for he exams, the poorer one could probably be working part time to help out the family, in which case his studies will inevitably suffer even though he is of the same intelligence level].....then when it comes to two students with the same good 'A' level results, it is the richer one who is able to go overseas to Ox-bridge as his parents can afford to pay for it, whereas the poorer one has to suffice with a local university i.e. NTU/NUS which is still pretty respectable (NUS is ranked right up there ok! Don't play play....) but we gotta admit it's not quite in the same league in terms of prestige when compared to your Ox-bridge and the Ivy League unis......The kind of people you meet there, the opportunities for internships with prestigious MNCs, and the overseas work opportunities upon graduation is also something that local unis cannot match.....
So there you go, it has become a hard fact that all things being equal, the financial background of the family can affect the kind of grades you get in schools, and the kind of schools you go to, which can then affect the kind of grades you go on to get in schools, the unis you g to, and eventually the kind of jobs you get, and which income group you get slotted into in future.....Reckon, it s no always such a neat, linear equation, but our emphasis on meritocracy (i.e. grades) is reinforcing this phenomenon....
1) degree-seekers-fly-overseas-for-an-edge
2) raffles-institution-now-a-middle-class-school-says-principal
3) a-hard-look-at-averting-elitism
posted by Dark Shadow | 12:20 PM
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