With so many resources devoted to the business of elite academics and so many people scrambling for the limited space at the top of the ladder, it is worth asking what exactly it is you get in the end—what it is we all get, because the elite students of today, as their institutions never tire of reminding them, are the leaders of tomorrow.

In his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy Michael Young predicted that a detached ruling class would be the ultimate consequence of the new grammar school tests developed in the 1950s. Young feared the new tripartite school system (grammars, secondary moderns and technical schools) would give superior status to academic skills over creative or t

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After the 1970s, meritocracy began to look more and more like Michael Young’s dark satire. A system intended to give each new generation an equal chance to rise created a new hereditary class structure. Educated professionals pass on their money, connections, ambitions, and work ethic to their children, while less educated families fall further beh

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