The merit system is the process of promoting and hiring government employees based on their ability to perform a job, rather than on their political connections. It is the opposite of the spoils system.
Famous quotes containing the words merit and/or system:
“There are few things more difficult than to appraise the work of a man suddenly dead in his youth; to disentangle promise from achievement; to save him from that sentimentalizing which confuses the tragedy of the interruption with the merit of the work actually performed.”
—Ezra Pound (18851972)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athleticsa complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and powerthe womens programs are just as doomed as the mens are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if thats the kind of success for womens sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)