It's easily manipulated. We already have barrier to entry in several professions via required degrees and certifications. Those degrees and certifications require significant time and resources to attain. They can also be skewed to certain demographic a la old school SAT exams.

My own personal experience is the CPA exam. Passing it shows me nothing of one's accounting abilities. I've seen people who pass it and I wonder how they tie their shoelaces in the morning without injuring themselves. I've seen others who haven't passed it but are brilliant accountants.

All that exam tells me is that a person had resources to not work for six to nine months so they could study and pass the exam. That's it.

But without it, you're just not gonna go very far in the industry at all.

Then the AICPA keeps making the exam more difficult and whines that there's a shortage of young talent.

So what "merit" are we going to measure in this hypothetical system?