Fifty years after the term "meritocracy" was coined, this book asks where the idea of meritocracy has led.

It is now fifty years since Michael Young wrote The Rise of the Meritocracy -- a sociological fantasy set in the twenty-first century and portraying a sinister, highly stratified society organised around intelligence testing and educational selection. After some difficulty getting published, it was an immediate success and became very widely read. But it does not seem to have had the influence that Michael most wanted for it, over Labour Party thinking. The story was intended to help turn Labour away from meritocracy, by reminding it of the importance of communitarian values. Curiously, though, half a century later we have a Labour Government declaring the promotion of meritocracy as one of its primary objectives.

So what is going on? This book offers a variety of opinions. Building on a conference held to mark the half-centenary of Michael Young's Institute of Community Studies, it contains commentaries by a selection of academics, journalists and politicians, from Asa Briggs to David Willetts, on the origin, meaning and future of meritocracy.