Merit is usually the excellence that entitles to praise. Thus, when we talk about merit in education, we tend to select a few students based on their excellent performance and either reward them through some means may it be scholarship, grant, etc.
There is another very popular word in academia, which is called 'access'. We educationists use the term 'access' to provide 'means or opportunity to to get education' to those who are from disadvantaged backgrounds, so as to bring them in par with others from advantaged backgrounds. Access has been a popular term, and is considered as one of the principles for many universities, educational institutions and is widely used in the global agendas such as Sustainable Development Goals, Millennium Development Goals, Education For All, and what not!
Educational institutions specially those who provide scholarships and loans have these words 'access' and 'merit' both in their dictionaries and exercise them widely to avoid/devoid people from the opportunities. While providing scholarships, educational institutions seek to find the best students from the disadvantaged backgrounds and provide them scholarship and they call it 'selection is based on merit'. If one looks at it carefully, they provide access of education to those 'excellent' students who are intelligent but do not have required financial resources to pursue their studies further.
However, by providing scholarship to the meritocratic students, they forget that the people from disadvantaged background won't have the required social capital and other resources to attain that 'merit' which these educational institutions ask for. Research studies have proved that the pupils with better social capital, surroundings, educated parents, educational environment, etc. tend to be far more successful than those who do not possess these facilities. Thus, by providing scholarships based on merit you put struggling disadvantaged students into a never ending struggle of coming upto the merit to attain their scholarship money.
Looking at it logically, merit in disadvantaged populations would be obtained by people who are either 'born genius' or are those who are comparatively 'less needy' than others who are 'more needy'. Thus, by providing scholarships on merit one tends to create caders in the disadvantaged populations i.e. more disadvantaged students and less disadvantaged students. Out of which, latter is selected for studying further and the former is ignored. This implies that there is a sheer ignorance towards the more disadvantaged students, or may be a 'merit based scholarships for disadvantaged students' is a deliberate effort to suppress the more disadvantaged students in favour of less disadvantaged.
When institutions take both the words merit and access together, they need to think and rethink on their basic premise. As these both words do not go together. If you and I don't think, we would be leaving 'more disadvantaged' into comparatively more miserable situations. This would not lead to the increase in the quality of life of 'more disadvantaged' but would urge them to quit education or may be give up on life in awake of finding support.
So? Merit and Access? which one do you select for your institution ?
Rethink before you devoid people of the opportunity to get education in the name of merit!
