While merit aid sounds like an effective way to combat brain drain, there is no conclusive evidence that it works.
While "merit aid" sounds good, it is aid awarded to those who probably have more ability to pay for a college education.
City officials said that while merit pay might seem far-fetched now, given the union's opposition, the Giuliani administration thought that it had overcome equally difficult hurdles in the past -- winning concessions from principals on tenure and negotiating a contract with teachers the last time around that provided no raises for the first two years.
But the move would help the board and management make a better case to labor unions that they are spreading the pain to other GM constituents, including shareholders and executives, whose ranks are also shrinking while merit pay raises are being eliminated.
While merit pay can be defined in a variety of ways, it most commonly refers to paying teachers based on performance instead of the number of years spent in the classroom.
However, while merit is invisible for non-witnesses and outsiders, in contrast, prestige and leadership share some of the salience of dominance, which makes them both easily visible even for outsiders.
What fascinated one year bored the next, and printers were attuned to the tastes of the times: one kind of homicide might generate two dozen pamphlets, while another merited none.
Neil Burns, the chief executive of the London County Cricket Club, a mentoring organisation said: "We have been discussing for a while the merits of him being frank about his problems.
He acknowledged that their issues, while not new, merited his attention.
While his comments merited cheers, it left many of the young hackers cold.
