In the United States, the election of former president Donald Trump “tells exactly the same story”, said Markovits, author of the book “The Meritocracy Trap”.
Given these developments, it is important that Singapore remains an “open, inclusive society where social mobility is alive and possible, even for those who start out as very poor in life”, said Institute of Policy Studies deputy director (research) Gillian Koh.
MIDDLE-CLASS WAGES WITHOUT ‘ELABORATE DEGREES’?
Yet, some shortcomings of meritocracy — where advancement and economic rewards should be the result of talent or effort, instead of family background or connections — are clear even before one enters the workforce.
Parents who have achieved positions of advantage “mobilise their social networks” to help their children secure valuable internships, opportunities that would not be open to students who are the first in their family to graduate from university, said Koh.
“So can we think about how meritocracy needs to be complemented by other methods and programmes so that these kids gather the right work experience (and) useful contacts, so that when they finally graduate, they have as much chance (to get good jobs)?”
A solution, said Markovits, is to restructure the labour market so that people do not require “elaborate university degrees” to be able to get good jobs.
The Europeans are “very good” at traditional trades and guilds, “so that you can, in Germany, have a very good job as a glazier or an electrician or a plumber”.
“An ordinary person can’t walk … off the street and already know how to do it,” said Markovits. These are craft jobs done by people who have “serious training” but not degrees, “and they’re paid middle-class wages”.
In Singapore, such roles could be in nursing, for example, or port operations. While more nurses now have bachelor’s and even postgraduate degrees, Singapore General Hospital advanced practice nurse Tan Hui Li said nurses without a degree “can still do their job well”.
“Besides the education, caring and doing it (well) comes with experience,” she said.
Over at port operator PSA, service engineer Syed Muhammad Fayyadh recently earned his work-study diploma in port automation technology. The course introduced him to software and new technologies that can apply to automated guided vehicles — skills in line with future port operations.
THE MILITARY ELITE AND PUBLIC SERVICE
When it comes to ensuring equitable opportunities at work, a big question is whether the government, as Singapore’s biggest employer, is setting the norm. Here, the career paths of scholarship awardees including the military elite are often scrutinised.
Based on empirical evidence, scholarships do provide a “springboard” in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), said Samuel Chan, author of the 2019 book “Aristocracy of Armed Talent: The Military Elite in Singapore”.
He found that someone who had been awarded an SAF Overseas Scholarship (now known as the SAF Scholarship, second in prestige only to the President’s Scholarship, according to the Ministry of Defence) would probably get to the “one-star” rank of brigadier general between the ages of 39 and 41.
“The next tier down”, those who were awarded the SAF Merit Scholarship, usually get there a year or two later, he said.
And those who were neither an overseas nor merit scholar usually achieve the rank between the ages of 43 and 46.
“That shows you roughly the advantages of the scholarship,” said Chan, who considers the military elite to be one-star generals and above. “I’d say they’re set apart from the rest of the officer corps.”
A scholarship does not “guarantee success”, however, and performing on the job is non-negotiable, he said.
Former head of the civil service Lim Siong Guan added: “Not every SAF scholar gets to be a general; not everybody even gets to be a full colonel.”
Questions have also been raised about the relevance of a military career to some high-level corporate or public service appointments that some retired officers get.
Meritocracy works best where there are “clearly defined goals that are objectively assessed”, said National University of Singapore associate professor of philosophy Loy Hui Chieh.
But in an environment where “the questions are more open-ended, where it’s no longer a straightforward matter of … winning a war but rather, for instance, helping Singapore upgrade itself … it’s no longer so clear-cut that there’s a straightforward metric we can select for,” he said.
To Chan, however, “it’s not simply (that) you get a cushy job because you served in the military”.
“We need to understand the big scheme of things,” he said. Generals have “lots of responsibility” and oversee budgets that can amount to “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
Because of the relatively early retirement age of 50 for SAF officers, “it’s in Singapore’s interests to be able to use their talents and deploy them somewhere else, where they can help society”, he said.
In the wider public service, scholarships are a way of identifying leaders, said Terence Ho, an associate professor in practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “But it’s important that this isn’t the only route.
“It’s important to ensure that the so-called ‘farmers’, or those who don’t come through the scholarship route, would also have sufficient opportunity to learn, grow on the job, demonstrate their potential and eventually also rise to the top.”
“Scholars” and “farmers” are terms borrowed from Imperial China, where magistrates were scholars who ruled over farmers, said Loy.
For years, Singapore’s public servants have been identified for progression based on their Currently Estimated Potential (CEP). But the in-joke is that CEP stands for “career ending point”.
In 2020, Minister-in-charge of the Public Service Chan Chun Sing said the CEP system would be updated, as the career road map should be for public officers’ next three to five years, not their next 30 years.
“We’ll also update how we assess high potential. To show leadership potential, we must not only be able to make sound policies (but also) be able to implement well, innovate, work in teams, communicate effectively and mobilise relevant stakeholders for collective action,” he said.
Lim told CNA: “I’d like to believe that every time we appoint anybody to any appointment, whether civilian or military, we’re just trying to get the best candidate that (we) can, whom (we) are aware of.
“You hope most times you do a good job of it. … Sometimes the decisions could be better.”
No system is perfect, he added, and Singapore works on areas where it is “not doing well enough”.
REGARDLESS OF AGE, DISABILITY AND MORE?
Over in the private sector, it is difficult to police the provision of equal opportunities, Koh said.
But there are guidelines from the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices, and these will be made into law. The guidelines include hiring based on merit and regardless of age, race, religion, marital status, family responsibilities or disability.
There are funds and grants to help companies be more inclusive, but firms must have “a more open mind” and give individuals the opportunity to “show what they can bring to the table”, said wheelchair user Kishon Chong, a customer experience and inclusivity officer in transport company Tower Transit.
There is also bias that is sometimes unconscious.
Research by the global non-profit Generation — which helps to improve employment outcomes for underserved workers — found that an “overwhelming majority” of hiring managers perceived younger job candidates to be a “better fit” for certain roles, said Prateek Hegde, the CEO of Generation Singapore.
“However, when we asked them about on-the-job performance, they all agreed that the mature workers were performing on a par with the younger workers.”
Ultimately, even if a society believes in meritocracy, “you want other principles to balance it”, such as social justice, said Goodhart.
“There’s every threat that the concept of meritocracy will cause those who progress to be puffed up and to say, ‘We deserve our position, and why can’t everybody else put in the same effort as I did to arrive where I am?’” said Koh.
But Singapore is “too small” to afford such a division, she warned. “The smaller we are, the more we should realise we need one another so much more.”
Watch this episode of Measuring Meritocracy here. And read about how to keep meritocracy a driver of opportunity in schools here.