The Myth of Merit Pay

Champlain College Faculty Senate Slide Presentation on Abolishing Merit Pay

Until April 2018, Champlain College faculty were given raises on the basis of "merit".

As a member of the Faculty Senate Welfare Committee, I prepared and gave this presentation showing that both student and manager evaluations are deeply affected by implicit racial, gender, and discipline biases to the point where it's not possible to claim that those who receive higher ratings are truly more "meritorious" than those who receive lower ratings.

Thus, "merit" pay is unjust because it has a strong likelihood of reinforcing and perpetuating race and gender compensation gaps.

The faculty was persuaded by this evidence and voted to abolish "merit" pay and move to an equal raise for all faculty.

This was a very proud moment for me.

Licensing/copyright information: This presentation is governed by a "CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" license, which lets you remix, adapt, and build upon my work non-commercially, as long as you credit me and license your new creations under the identical terms.

If you use/adapt this work, please post a link back to this page on one or more of your social media accounts and/or websites (this will also help spread the word about this important issue, so please do not neglect to do this!). Also, please let me know how it went!

Name on credit: Elizabeth Allen-Pennebaker, MA, MSt, DPhil, Assistant Professor, Champlain College