The Rise of the Meritocracy is a book by British sociologist and politician Michael Dunlop Young which was first published in 1958. It describes a dystopian society in a future United Kingdom in which merit has become the central tenet of society, replacing previous divisions of social class and creating a society stratified between a meritorious power-holding elite and a disenfranchised underclass of the less meritorious. The essay satirised the Tripartite System of education that was being practised at the time. The narrative of the book ends in 2034 with a revolt against the meritocratic elite by the "Populists".

Michael Dunlop Young, Baron Young of Dartington,, was a British sociologist, social activist and politician. He was an urbanist of different dimensions such as academic researcher, polemicist and institution-builder.