A GIRL from rural Balochistan who gets approximately 700 marks in her FSc pre-medical and wants to become a doctor and go back and provide medical services in her underserved region will not get admission in any good public sector medical college as her marks would not be high enough. But the boy from a rich household who went to an excellent high-fee private school in Karachi for his A-Levels will make it — all the boy wants is to complete his medical degree and leave Pakistan to make a life for himself in the US or UK. The notion of ‘merit’ that we work with in Pakistan means that the boy will get admission on merit and the girl will be denied the opportunity.

‘I have just won a gold medal at a track and field event in the Olympics. I have passed all my exams but my grades aren’t as good as they could have been because of the time I had to spend preparing for the Olympics’. A leading private sector university in the country would reject this young person’s application for admission as its notion of merit for admissions is based solely on performance in the Matric/O-Level and Intermediate/A-Level examinations and the undergraduate admission test.

Though public sector institutions have a two per cent quota for persons with disabilities (some 10pc of the population reportedly face challenges), private sector institutions don’t generally have such quotas and only ‘welcome’ a PWD if he/she qualifies on the same parameters as another student. Yet, if you look at the vision statements of any private or public educational institution, they proclaim that they value the principle of inclusion, do not discriminate, and admit students purely on the basis of ‘merit’.

But the question that is not looked at in detail is how ‘merit’ is constructed. Usually merit is just the weighted average of performance on some examinations. But we know that exam results don’t always align with ‘success’ in life. There are multiple types of intelligence, talents and strengths which can’t be measured by exams and tests, and definitely not simpler exams like A-Levels/FSc and/or aptitude tests. Interviews, performances, portfolios and a lot more are needed to assess merit. However, the ‘merit’ most academic institutions swear to uphold is usually just a narrow concern about exam marks. If you have seen how Michael Jordan in his prime moved on the basketball court, you would immediately know that intelligence is not just about test results!

A narrow construction of merit is not merely a denial of inclusion; it is a denial of merit itself.

So, a narrow construction of merit is not merely a denial of inclusion; it is a denial of merit itself. The construction has to be broad enough to cover all dimensions of merit. If the definition does not cover these aspects, we are denying people an opportunity to demonstrate their merit. This is tantamount to a denial of merit itself.

There are deeper problems. If inclusion is one of the pillars of admission policies, which most institutions claim, then how can a narrow construction of merit be justified? Inclusion as a concept leans on equity and equality. Merit leans a bit more on equality and much less on equity. It reminds me of a cartoon sketch on social media where a teacher tells his students, who comprise all sorts of animals, that whoever gets to the top of the nearest tree first will get the maximum marks. Should a snake, lion, monkey, elephant and a crocodile be judged on their ability to climb trees? Is that notion of merit fair? It is certainly ‘equal’ as it sets the same task for everyone. But it is not fair or based on equity. And it is definitely not inclusive.

In a society where 30pc of the people are poor, where vulnerability is at more than 50pc, where 40pc of children are malnourished, where socioeconomic inequality is on the rise and where the state hardly provides even basic amenities, such as food, education and healthcare, to its people, a narrow version of merit can only be exclusionary and a way of reinforcing existing inequalities.

This has been one of the lessons learnt from opening up the schooling sector to private providers. While the latter have been providing education to a lot of children, access to education has become dependent on parental income. The country’s ‘elite’ schools aren’t cheap. Admission to them is not based on ‘merit’ but on the ability to pay. Since that is the case, how can colleges and universities be justified in their narrow construction of merit and assume this is equity-based or inclusive?

A child who goes to a good private school will get a much better quality of education than the one who goes to a government school or even to a low- to medium-fee private school. The elite private school will also ensure its students become good at taking examinations and cracking the admission process at higher institutions, while low-fee or government schools will not be able to do that. Is this really merit? And even if one wants to continue with the delusion, how can institutions still claim to be inclusive?

Evidence of this is available. Study the admission data of any ‘good’ university, and it becomes apparent that although the elite schools comprise only 2pc to 3pc of schools in the country, they are disproportionately represented in elite university admissions that are supposed to be based on merit and the principle of inclusion. Universities say they want to be inclusive to ensure equity and uphold merit to ensure the most talented make it to the top. But the construction of merit is so narrow that it turns out to be exclusionary. In fact, it may actually work against merit by cutting out people who might be intelligent in other ways even if they are not good at taking high-stakes examinations. We need to think a lot more deeply about the meaning and construction of merit and inclusion if we are going to operationalise these principles effectively for the good of the country and its younger population.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at Lums.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2026