Virginia’s Left and Right agree that merit matters. They disagree about what merit is—and how institutions should recognize it.

by Kenrick N.G. Brown

The Constitution begins with an aspiration. “We the People,” it declares, seek to form “a more perfect Union.” The wording matters. The Framers did not announce that they had created a perfect country. They described political union as an unfinished project—something capable of improvement, correction, and refinement.

Virginia should think about meritocracy in much the same way.

Nearly everyone claims to support merit. Republicans support merit. Democrats support merit. University administrators, civil-rights organizations, business leaders, public employees, and taxpayers all invoke merit when defending their preferred systems of hiring, promotion, and admission.

Yet agreement on the word disguises disagreement over its meaning.

The political Right generally locates merit in common and measurable indicators: grades, examinations, professional credentials, technical qualifications, work experience, and demonstrated performance. The political Left generally defines merit more contextually, placing greater weight on unequal opportunity, obstacles overcome, historical exclusion, personal experience, and demographic inclusion.

The resulting debate is not always a conflict between supporters and opponents of meritocracy. More often, it is a conflict between rival conceptions of merit.

Virginia therefore needs something more intellectually serious than the familiar argument between “merit” and “diversity.” The Commonwealth should seek a more perfect meritocracy: a system that recruits broadly and recognizes genuine disadvantage without allowing demographic objectives, institutional prestige, or subjective judgments to displace transparent standards of preparation and competence.

That requires understanding the Left–Right spectrum of merit.

Two rival accounts of merit

At the traditional end of the spectrum, merit is largely demonstrated through observable achievement. Applicants sit for the same examination, complete comparable coursework, acquire recognized credentials, or show evidence that they have performed similar work successfully.

This model appeals to conservatives because it promises neutral rules. The same requirements apply to everyone, and the institution need not classify applicants by race, sex, ancestry, or political identity. Common measurements also make favoritism harder to conceal: an examination may be imperfect, but everyone knows what is being measured, and a work sample reveals more about an applicant’s abilities than a fashionable statement about values.

The traditional model nevertheless has a weakness. Credentials are not the same thing as merit. An elite degree may indicate intelligence, diligence, and previous achievement. It may also reflect family resources, access to good schools, familiarity with admissions systems, or inherited professional networks. Traditional meritocracy can therefore decay into credentialism: a system in which institutions reward evidence of prior selection more reliably than present ability.

At the progressive end of the spectrum, merit is understood in context. Two applicants with identical results may not have travelled equally difficult paths. A student who excelled while attending an under-resourced school, working twenty hours per week, or caring for family members may have demonstrated qualities that a test score alone does not capture. An employer relying exclusively on familiar universities may overlook capable candidates who lacked access to those institutions.

This model appeals to the Left because formally equal rules can reproduce unequal starting conditions. Treating everyone identically at the final stage of competition does not erase differences in preparation, wealth, security, or opportunity accumulated during the preceding years. There is wisdom here as well: context can reveal merit rather than obscure it, broad recruitment can discover talent, and removing requirements unrelated to the actual work can make an institution more—not less—meritocratic.

But the contextual model also has weaknesses. Subjective review gives decision-makers more room to reward ideological conformity, social fashion, or demographic objectives. The more institutions move away from comparable evidence, the harder it becomes for rejected applicants—or the public—to understand why one person was selected over another.

At its most aggressive, diversity policy does not merely search for overlooked merit. It treats demographic representation as an independent institutional good. When that happens, a real trade-off emerges: some weight is transferred from measured preparation or demonstrated performance toward the desired composition of the entering class or workforce. That trade-off should be acknowledged rather than hidden beneath slogans.

Spanberger’s position on the spectrum

Governor Abigail Spanberger’s Executive Order 9 provides a useful Virginia case study.

Signed on January 17, 2026, the order establishes an equal-opportunity policy across state government. It prohibits discrimination in employment, appointments, procurement, and public services, while directing agencies to undertake affirmative recruitment efforts aimed at qualified minorities, women, disabled people, and older Virginians.

That places the order on the center-left of the merit spectrum. It goes beyond a strictly neutral prohibition against discrimination, directing government to act affirmatively in recruiting particular populations. The order therefore treats inclusion not merely as a hoped-for result, but as a legitimate objective of public administration.

At the same time, the order expressly states that affirmative recruitment does not authorize lowering bona fide job requirements, qualifications, or performance standards. That limitation is critical. It distinguishes Spanberger’s position from an outcome-driven system in which demographic results override common standards.

The order’s practical success will depend on how state agencies interpret the distance between those two commitments. Affirmative recruitment can mean advertising positions more widely, searching beyond familiar universities, ensuring access for disabled applicants, or encouraging qualified people to apply. None of those measures necessarily conflicts with meritocracy; they may improve it by increasing the number of capable candidates under consideration.

But affirmative recruitment can also create institutional pressure to produce preferred demographic outcomes. This is not merely theoretical. Executive Order 13583, issued in 2011, required federal agencies to develop diversity and inclusion plans emphasizing workforce diversity, inclusion, leadership, and agency accountability. The Department of Veterans Affairs subsequently employed a Diversity Index comparing the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of its workforce with that of the civilian labor force, and measured its progress against a numerical benchmark. Such measurements do not prove that agencies have imposed quotas or lowered qualifications. They do demonstrate, however, how an outreach policy can evolve into a system judged partly through demographic benchmarks. Once representation becomes an official performance measure, managers may face pressure to reconsider neutral standards whenever those standards produce politically unsatisfactory results.

The language of Executive Order 9 recognizes this danger. Whether its implementation avoids it remains the real test.

Hiring: broaden the pool, preserve the contest

Virginia’s public agencies should draw a sharp distinction between recruitment and selection. Recruitment determines who hears about a position, who believes applying is worthwhile, and whether an organization searches beyond its usual networks. Selection determines who is actually best prepared to perform the work.

The Commonwealth should recruit broadly. State agencies should advertise beyond a narrow group of favored universities and professional organizations. They should remove requirements that bear little relationship to the job. They should make application systems accessible and build pathways for veterans, community-college graduates, disabled Virginians, career changers, and people from rural communities.

Once candidates enter the pool, however, the decisive criteria should concern the work. Can the applicant perform the required analysis? Can the applicant write clearly, manage a budget, interpret a regulation, supervise employees, operate technical systems, or serve the public professionally? Has the applicant shown judgment? Can previous accomplishments be verified?

Structured interviews, job-relevant work samples, clearly stated qualifications, and meaningful probationary periods are more defensible than vague judgments about “fit” or political statements about diversity. Demographic outreach may widen the field. It should not decide the winner.

Promotion presents an even clearer case. Credentials and personal narratives may reasonably influence an entry-level decision because an employer has limited evidence of future performance. As a career progresses, however, those initial signals should matter less, and results should matter more. A degree should help someone enter a profession. It should not become a lifetime entitlement to advancement.

Admissions: metrics, context, and transparency

College admissions are more complicated because universities are not selecting finished professionals. They are estimating potential. Grades and standardized tests measure something real, but not everything important. Course rigor, writing ability, intellectual curiosity, sustained achievement, work obligations, family responsibilities, and hardship may all provide relevant evidence.

The mistake is to imagine that objective measurements are perfectly meritocratic—or that subjective review is automatically fairer. Common metrics can reflect unequal preparation. Subjective criteria can reflect wealth and social polish. Affluent applicants can obtain essay coaching, unpaid internships, elaborate extracurricular activities, and carefully managed recommendations. Eliminating test requirements does not eliminate advantage; it may merely shift advantage into forms that are harder to measure.

Virginia’s public universities should therefore use a combination of transparent academic indicators and individualized context. They should explain what qualities they reward and how those qualities relate to academic preparation and institutional mission. They should also distinguish individual experience from demographic classification.

In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court held that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful—under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment for UNC, a public university, and under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for Harvard, a private one. The Court nevertheless stated that universities may consider an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life—through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise—when that experience is tied to individual character or ability. What institutions may not do is treat racial identity itself as a substitute for individual assessment.

That distinction fits the more-perfect-meritocracy model. A university may recognize that an applicant overcame discrimination, poverty, family disruption, poor schooling, disability, or geographic isolation. Those experiences may reveal resilience or achievement. But the institution should evaluate what the individual did—not assign assumptions to the individual based on membership in a racial category.

The same scrutiny should apply to preferences that do not carry the DEI label. Legacy admissions, donor influence, insider recommendations, and inherited institutional connections are also departures from pure competition. A university cannot credibly defend merit by opposing one form of preference while protecting another.

Merit is not found at either extreme

The strongest meritocracy is neither a machine that converts test scores and prestigious degrees into permanent rank nor an opaque committee system that adjusts standards to engineer demographic outcomes.

The Right is correct that common standards, measurable qualifications, and individual accountability protect institutions from favoritism. The Left is correct that opportunity is unequal, conventional credentials can encode accumulated advantage, and institutions may miss capable people when they recruit through closed networks. Each side becomes less persuasive when it denies the other side’s strongest point.

A traditional system becomes unjust when it mistakes inherited credit for demonstrated merit. A diversity-centered system becomes unjust when it mistakes representation for competence or treats people primarily as members of groups.

Virginia should instead adopt a merit-first equal-opportunity model. Recruit broadly. Remove irrelevant barriers. Consider individual circumstances. Preserve common academic and occupational requirements. Explain selection criteria. Evaluate people after selection. Reward performance. Impose consequences for failure.

This model will not produce perfect outcomes. No admissions or hiring system will. Human judgment cannot be eliminated, and merit cannot always be reduced to a single numerical ranking. But perfection is not the standard.

The Constitution speaks of a more perfect Union because self-government is a continuing exercise in improvement. Meritocracy should be understood in the same way. The question is not whether Virginia can design a flawless system. It is whether each reform brings the Commonwealth closer to institutions that are open, competent, transparent, and accountable.

Nearly everyone likes the word merit. The difficult work begins when we decide what evidence should count, how competing considerations should be weighted, and whether those selected can actually perform.

A more perfect meritocracy would neither worship credentials nor abandon measurements. It would neither ignore disadvantage nor convert demographic identity into entitlement. It would open doors more widely—and keep standards honest once people walk through them.

Kenrick N.G. Brown is a December 2025 graduate of the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce. In August 2026, he will begin an MSc in Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.