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MIT Dean of Admissions Resigns in Lying Scandal
Billosaur writes "CNN has a report that the Dean of Admissions at MIT has resigned her post after admitting to lying about her academic record. 'Marilee Jones, who joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1979 to lead the recruitment of women at the university, stepped down from her post after admitting that she had misrepresented her academic degrees to the institute, according to a statement posted on MIT's Web site.' The school had recently received information about her credentials and the subsequent investigation uncovered the misrepresentations. Question is, why did it take 28 years?"
Either: She is obviously good at her job and should keep it.
Or: University degrees aren't worth very much.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
The thing that really annoys me about this whole ordeal is the nearly unfathomable amounts of hypocrisy which envelop the entire scenario. First of all, she was the dean of admissions--it was her job to admit and deny people, to make or break what I'm sure were many of the applicants' dreams. I'm a high school senior (trying to decide between UCSB and the University of Washington for next year), and this makes my blood simply boil. I didn't apply to MIT, but I know a lot of people who did. Think about how horrible and betrayed they must feel that the dean of admissions didn't even go to college herself! And all that talking and prodding about academic honesty...
I think the worst part, though, is that she wasn't just the dean of admissions--she was capitalizing on her position of power as well, giving speeches to high schools (such as my own) to promote herself and the book that she wrote. That's what really irks me.
In some situations, I would have said that after 28 years doing a good job in her position, she should be reprimanded but not asked to resign. However, her blatant abuse of the system and extensive lying and hypocrisy simply drive me crazy.
- dshaw
Because on her speaking tours, she would blabber on with her fat mouth about how kids were trying too hard and that you didn't need a degree to do well.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Why does it matter, now? If it took 28 years to come out and she has been continually rising in both job responsibility and performance (which she has), then why does anyone really care? Obviously she can do this particular job well. She screwed up... twenty... eight... years ago.
CNN had a poll yesterday asking if people lied on resumes. The last time I glanced at the results it was something like 85% saying they never had. Rigggggggght. I've seen more than my fair share of resumes through the years and easily half of them have something that is shady. More so, many of them have inflated experience and importance for tasks at previous employers. Sadly, this is the norm, not the exception as that CNN poll would have one believe. Then again given that the modern resume is more a sales sheet than a real starting point for evaluating someone's competence for a task, should we expect any different?
--- I do not moderate.
Because she was qualified and was doing a good job, obviously.
Unfortunately, even more than most of society, academia is focused on credentials instead of knowledge and ability. It makes some sense, from a self-serving perspective.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
...then maybe she was doing a great job anyways? I am not justifying lying, but if she were to lose her job, it should've happened years ago. If she hadn't resigned, would she have been fired after all this time?
Has she been doing a good job during all these years?
I guess it doesn't matter because honesty and credibility are, if not the most important traits.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
If she's been there for nearly three decades, it sounds like she's been doing her jobs well enough to earn promotions whether she had degrees or not.
Several (unrelated) ways to look at this:
If she has such a meritious service record, why is her educational background important?
Wait, those awards are for people who deserve them, and education is the only way to be that good. The award system is flawed.
She only got those awards because she is a woman!
Lying is not to be tolerated, and it undoes any good she may have done.
No way. This entire story is a lie. Girls don't exist on the internet (even CNN.com)
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
"...and that you didn't need a degree to do well."
Can we get her to post into the "Ask Slashdot" section?
she didnt just misrepresnet her degrees, she had none. She claimed that she went to various schools and had a phd when in reality the most college she had was some part time work and never completed anything other than high school. And the irony of this was this is the person in charge os admissions and very vocal nationally about how high school students should worry less about their resume. She got away with this in the public eye for 28 years and became the dean of admissions at a place like MIT. now that is impressive.
Boston.com has a much more informative article the summary does not tell you the scope of this.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
To be honest, judging by the replies I may have a bit more relaxed attitude towards this because I'm from Europe or something, not sure...
But:
Question is, why did it take 28 years?
That is not the question. The question is why does she/they feel like she has to go *after* 28 years of apparently doing her job? Who the hell cares about education at this point.
There's got to be more to this story...
from The Tech, the student newspaper: http://www-tech.mit.edu/V127/N21/jones.html
I have some sympathy for her.. after all, she can't have been that bad at her job if she managed to survive 28 years. In fact, she's probably quite competent.. It's a sad state of affairs that there is so much stock held in a piece of paper that basically states "I can commit to memory a certain amount of data given several years". How many of us have been to a job interview, that you breeze the aptitude tests they give you, you wow the boss with your skill and depth of knowledge, but you get a sorry from the HR person "It's company policy to only hire people with degrees.. sorry". It's no wonder that people lie on their CV's to get in the door and past these narrow minded policies. Come to think of it, every technically brilliant person that I've worked with either dropped out of university, or never went at all. Every few years or so we'll bump into one another whilst I'm contracting somewhere, and these companies that did 'take a risk' and employed them without a degree treasure them immensely.
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
The reason that it took so long is that 28 years ago she applied to be an administrative assistant. That position did not require a degree. While her credentials should have been checked then, they weren't. By the time she got around applying for Dean of Admissions, she had already been at MIT for 2 decades, and it wasn't policy to recheck credentials for internal promotions. The lie was finally discovered because of an anonymous tip. Previous to that, there wasn't any reason to check them as she was quite competently performing her duties.
you just cant trust wikipedia to vett their contributors... I mean, after all, it never happens in real life that someone misrepresents themselves.
reworded: if MIT can miss that kind of lie for 28 years, I think people were a little harsh on wikipedia a while back when that editor had misrepresented him/herself.
Recruiters keep telling me I'm under qualified. I was starting to believe them, and here all along I'm just as qualified as the big shots. I just don't lie as well.
This is a special situation because she was working for a university. Integrity is the most important value in academia. I consider it unethical that she maintained her post at a university while misrepresenting herself -- it's just like plagiarism. However, the degrees themselves obivously didn't matter. She was highly competent at her job, and if this were in another setting (corporate for example), this likely wouldn't be much of an issue.
She just lied about graduating. So, she was a student admitted once upon a time.
While she was good at her job, everyone must be subjected to the same standards of honesty and culpability. She made a mistake, and has benefited from it for a while. However, the truth came out and she must now, like she preaches to high-schoolers, accept responsibility for her actions.
"Reality continues to ruin my life" - Calvin and Hobbes
You sure act like it ;)
Words change. Get over it.
Hyperic Community Manager
they are both liars.
The fact that one of them wasn't caught for 28 years doesn't mean the other one deserves less severe treatment.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As an academic, I'd be the first to tell you: (high-quality) academic degrees are worth a lot if you are going to do research in that field. They are of little value for "general education" and life experience. Attending a top college is good for your networking and your resume, but otherwise I'd say only go to college if you want the education.
In this case, she was clearly doing the job well. Since we are no longer trying to predict how good she'll be at the job, her lying is irrelevant on that count, and if she had a research position, the story should have ended there (there are many professors with no undergrad or even grad degrees). However, she was Dean of Admissions. As such, she was in charge of using people's resumes for application purposes, and MIT would be sending an odd statement to future applicants by letting her keep her job had she not resigned.
"Question is, why did it take 28 years?"
Answer: because the person who hired her lied about THEIR qualifications - they can't read. There are more than a few university graduates who can't write a 2-page letter, summarize an editorial, make a decent presentation or speech, formulate logical arguments, ...oh .... BRIGHT ... SHINY ... THING ...
Than it really is about what you know.
It's more about fundraising and research than teaching.
It's more about the staff than the students.
And finally, it's far more about a University's reputation than their actual quality.
Is this the same dean that was the subject of some news articles
on the subject of promoting getting women into MIT ( preferentially )?
emt 377 emt 4
You're wrong. It's because she was damn good at her job, and, frankly, it'll be a loss to MIT that she resigned.
In fact, since every employer should want continual investigations of its employees, we should just let the government investigate all of us all the time. If new allegations arise, they can be added to a centralized file. It'd be very efficient, saving costs and benefiting from economies of scale. Also, a matrix of relationships can be built. Are you a graduate of MIT? Then you could be a questionable employee, since you may have been given a degree due to this deceptive LIAR admitting you into an MIT program. Did you, like many inside MIT and across the country, believe that she was one of the finest admissions deans in the country? Then you are a FOOL, because she LIED to get a job, didn't have a degree, let alone a Ph.D. And so you should be fired, or at least laughed at.
Oh, I know some will complain... "oh, but don't investigate me - I haven't done ANYthing wrong!" Well, if you think continual employee investigations are a bad idea, then you must have something to hide. And you must be kidding yourself if you don't think they're already here, even within all sorts of otherwise pedestrian organizations.
Maybe she can become a contributor to Wikipedia?
Is she sorry she lied, or just sorry she finally got caught?
As a Medical Doctor, Practicing Criminal Lawyer, Professor of Cosmology, Licensed Elevator Inspector Life Guard, and offical Breast Examiner; I am truely shocked that someone would misrepresent themselves in such a fashion.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
... is, why would anybody lie about going to RPI?! "The 'tute screw -- no matter which way you turn it, it goes in."
(JW / RPI '88 through '92 but for god's sake don't tell anyone)
So, yes, she's obviously better than average at the *details* of her job. But in a job where evaluating credentials is so important, it is inadmissible to have someone in charge who doesn't try to follow the highest moral standards.
They have to be consistent about their HR practices. If they don't fire her for falsifying her qualifications, they don't have any grounds to do likewise in any other case.
Good, bad, I dunno ... but her daughter is rather attractive.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
As a matriculated student in MIT's class of 2008... I'd have to mostly agree.
In 28 years she could have taken all the courses to get the degrees she needed. She might have had to pull some slight of hand to keep people from asking why she was doing it all again. Then the only problem would be the name of the schools, and the dates. She could then just say it was a clever hack.
It's interesting that if this were a court case, unless it was murder or a war crime it wouild have been moot because of the statute of limitations. While it varies in the US on a state by state basis it runs from 1 to 15 years. In Japan even murder has a 25 year statute of limitations. I think it's six years for breach of contract in Mass.
People exagerate. That's a bad thing. MIT didn't do it's job either. An dher track record was steller. Seems like no harm no foul to me.
It would surprise me if some good attorney could't play the statute of limitations angle and get her her job back.
I'd wager to say though thst she was probably good at crossing t's and dotting i's in the same way you hire a hacker to do your security. They know what to look for being experts in the field of what you don't want.
I'd take performance over paper any day.
Need Mercedes parts ?
No question, UCSB. Bikinis in January.
She could go and work at Wikipedia!
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The only reason they would look into her record after 28 years is that the higher-ups wanted to get rid of her. Mis-representating her qualifications when applying for the job gave her employer a no-law-suite way to get rid her.
"I have a ball. Perhaps you'd like to bounce it?"
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
how much do you wanna bet that the "anonymous tip" was from a disgruntled student (or parent) who just got rejected from MIT?
i went there and had a username (mjones) that many people guessed was marilee's (hers was marilee). so i got some (unintended) email that was meant for her, and i can tell you first hand how upset people can be when they don't get in.
so sad that her career had to end this way.
While I am unsurprised to see the obligatory, reactionary, anti-intellectual slashdot response, I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out your blatant logical fallacy.
Logical fallacies: yet another part of a balanced, high-quality edumacation.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
In the _real_ world, you perform well, you get rewarded. College degrees are useful, just like technical certifications, as a way of introducing yourself. A degree means you were able to memorize certain facts that were deemed relevant and play whatever game your teachers set up for you. Smart people, whether in a college environment or not, get absorbed and make a difference in the world. For some stuff, like nuclear physics, you can't get absorbed by hanging out at the local 7-11. For most day-to-day stuff, however, you need to be connected to reality as much as theory. That's not saying theory isn't important, just that those folks who change our lives the most are the folks that are able to connect information from all over the place to the common guy. Higher education has gotten so compartmentalized that it's really tough for academics to do this. Don't get me wrong -- I love the theory wonks, and we absolutely must have an ability to reason at the abstract level that a university education gives most people. It's just that context is important.
Given that preface, I'm puzzled at MIT's response. Obviously this lady lied -- so fine her. Make her make a public apology. It seems, however, that her lie cuts to the core of the value of certificates of education: do they really reflect practical, real-world values to the organization and society? Or are they laudable records of achievement which do not directly correlate with future value to society? If MIT allowed her to keep her job, they would be admitting that there are very important jobs at the university that really don't require a college degree. This is obviously too much for them, so they'll trot out the honesty thing. As if lying on a resume 30 years ago is the same as knocking over a liquor store. It is painfully clear that a) a degree was not required to perform a high-level administrative role at the college, and b) the lady, by any measurements, was doing a great job.
MIT needs to get honest with itself.
I don't endorse the view of this guy, but the summary is asking the question "why did it take 28 years?" and this short blog entry attempts to offer an explanation.
o n-why-mit-dean-marilee-jones-was-fired/
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/04/27/the-real-reas
The fact MIT was tipped off by an anonymous person (why wouldn't MIT simply say it was an internal audit, even simply refuse to comment?) makes the story ripe for conspiracy theory.
I once had a signature.
Many people on campus at MIT viewed her as a lightweight. She kept trying to portray herself as a "Den Mother."
The odd thing is that, unlike most other Deans of Admission, at MIT and elsewhere, she had a compulsion to turn herself into a public figure. First she became a public figure on campus, when the previous Dean of Admissions wasn't really known. Then she started becoming a presence among the community of Admissions officials and guidance conselors and universities at high schools. Finally she went on a very public book tour and would have frequent media appearances, making her one of the highest profile Admissions Deans in the country. It's almost as though she had a compulsion to publicly misrepresent herself to larger and larger audiences, as her fake academic would be repeated at all of these venues. She probably saw that she "got away with it" in 1978 and had a need to keep pushing the issue.
REALITY: she actually did a great job during her tenure, and in reality a degree truely means nothing about the persons ability.
Problem is most people that have degrees tend to be degree-racist and look down their nose at non degree holders with no good reason to.
I have met several IT and CS people in my life that were far smarter and better educated than Master degree holding fresh graduates.
Problem is managers hand out promotions like candy to a degree paper and ignore the incredible work and experience of the guys that are actually better at it.
Schools are incredibly degree-racist. They want a PHD holder for the janitor positions! (Ok, that might be a bit of a stretch)
Reality is that many MANY people self educate or get education from the "school of life" that is far more comprehensive and rounded than anything you get in a institution for around $100K or more plus a few years of your life.
I was lucky enough to have rich enough parents that I was able to afford to go to college full time. Most people in the world do not have that kind of luck.
honestly, if MIT does not beg for her to return based on her merit and 28 years of exemplory work, then MIT is pretty scummy.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As an MIT alum admitted prior to her regime, I'm pleased that she will be replaced. While her lies are a black eye for the institute, her admissions policies and personal philosophy had done more damage. In an attempt to admit "well-rounded" students and compete with the Harvards of the world, she chipped away at the identity that makes MIT unique: academic excellence, creativity and fun. If that makes MIT too "geeky," so be it.
Moreover, her outspokenness reduced the dignity of her position and the process. Admissions should serve the principles of the school -- period.
She is part of an elaborate Caltech prank.
Who shoved her way in based on a politically sensitive agenda and once she acquired enough power, could crush anyone in the system who might hurt her. But to be fair, it's Dean of Admissions. Is that Dean-worthy at all? Isn't a Dean of Admissions a glorified cool table in the high school lunchroom? As long as she was admitting an acceptable number of the appropriate demographic, geographic and economic dispersion, what possible value-add can the role bring? Probably none at all. It's like being the VP of Human Resources Diversity at a Fortune 500 company.
If i had mod points i would have modded you up. This was the thing that ran through my mind when i read the summary. How was she at her job? Was she good? Not whether she had a piece of paper that claimed that she could be good at her work.
Of course, she has no other option but to resign. After all she did lie.
My recommendation is University of Washington. UCSB has two major shortcomings:
* it is much too easy to be distracted by the closeness of the beach
* the prevalence of alhoholism in Santa Barbara is staggeringly high
But on the other hand, I know nothing of University of Washington. Good luck!
Especially since you don't have to know anything about computers to get a PhD in Computer Science. I one worked with a person who had a PhD in CS from a Big 10 school and was absolutely clueless. After a while I got tired of him using his advanced degree as a club and decided to do a little investigation. I discovered that their undergrad and graduate degrees was in Mathematics and their PhD specialized in a very mathematical area of AI.
In other words, this Computer Scientist had never taken a CS class! He was just good at algorithms.
What I find quite shocking is how many people have posted comments saying that her lying is irrelevant after so many years. Since when is integrity irrelevant? What about the other candidates for that admin assistant job 28 years ago that were turned down because of her lies? The job market is very competitive these days and many of us have bolstered our credentials by actually going to college to get bachelors and masters degrees. We have worked very hard and made sacrifices in order to be educated and competitive in the job market. What this woman did should be an insult to anyone who has ever worked hard to achieve a goal. She got ahead by lying and cheating the system. This is definitely not irrelevant.
You don't have to use the term racist to describe anyone who is prejudiced. There is already a word that encompasses that.
"At various times she claimed to have received degrees from Albany Medical College, Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute, and Union College and we confirmed that she had not graduated from any of these schools."
Rensselaer* Polytechnic Institute.
I wrote to her once. I made a special effort to find out who she was so that I could address her directly. I wanted to be sure that a student of mine got in to MIT because I thought he'd do very well there. He was working in my lab and had shown quite a lot of understanding and skill.
This news affects me but I'm not sure how. My student was accepted and perhaps my letter had an effect. If so, Jones showed good judgement according to my lights. The qualifications for college councilor, admissions officer or dean of admissions are pretty different from teacher or researcher. Basically you need skill in discerning where someone will be in four years, not where they think they'll be or where you hope they'll be. This is the sort of thing that probably can't be taught so all of her qualifications for her job were expereince.
But, when I went to the effort to address here personally, I thought that I was writing to a person of integrity and I feel strange to hear that this is now in question. Recommendations and such have to be based on trust and that pretty much has to be mutual among all parties. The story feels just a little more bizarre because of all this.
As a current MIT student, I am one among many who are sad to see her go. She did a great job, and has received numerous administrator awards. College admissions officers across the country appreciate all she has done to champion a more balanced admissions process. I for one am very glad we have a more balanced male/female ratio.
Those that she changed MIT admissions policy by herself are completely mistake. She was asked by the institute specifically before she became dean to find a way to increase female attendance at MIT. She acted in accordance with and with full backing by the MIT administration's wishes. She was very good at her job, which is why nobody even thought to question her credentials.
She has recently highlighted her "degrees" in speeches even in the past year. It was as if she were ASKING to be caught. The idea that "the only lie was 28 years ago and I just didn't have the courage to correct it" is misleading.
The idea that individual skills get rewarded is what keeps the country running on budget.
As someone who was just rejected from MIT, I think it's a shame she has to resign. I heard her speak, and her ideas and influence on the college admissions community have been amazing and wonderful. I think she's made some very good changes, and I can only hope that whoever they get next will continue in that direction. It's also obvious, as some others have said, that her job didn't really require a degree, only experience. That said, I think it's clear that, now that her lying has been exposed, she couldn't be allowed to keep her position.
to the French institute of language.
And how do you think words change meaning over time, if not for a misunderstanding of the original meaning?
Hyperic Community Manager
was it expected that she be blabbering on about not needing degrees, even though she felt inadequate not having one? I understand what you're saying, but I think the dictionary backs me up on this one:
Main Entry: irony
Pronunciation: 'I-r&-nE also 'I(-&)r-nE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -nies
Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirOnia, from eirOn dissembler
1 : a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning -- called also Socratic irony
2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c : an ironic expression or utterance
3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity b : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play -- called also dramatic irony, tragic irony
This article is a bit inaccurate; Jones first took a job as a secretary, not "to lead the recruitment of women at the university." What's more interesting is that her husband has strong ties to MIT, and runs part of the Lincoln Labs - MIT's defense research branch. [Source: MIT Student Newspaper]
I wonder how much he played into her hiring and promotion...
Fact 1: MIT has granted Full Professorships to people without degrees. They care about performance and ability more than about degrees.
Fact 2: They also care about integrity. A place like MIT earns and maintains its reputation based on both the quality and the integrity of the work done there. Integrity is where the dean screwed up, and why she is being canned.
Sorry brejc8. The correct answer is "neither."
A degree is important. It acknowledges that one has followed a prescribed course of study and has fulfilled certain testing requirements. And as |2718 implies, it can offer some advance assurance of one's ability to do certain jobs before actually getting "world" experience. (This is not to say that "world" experience isn't valuable, even in lieu of education: of course it is.)
However, integrity is far more important than education. Someone who is in a position of trust must demonstrate that they deserve it, whether they're educated or not. And lying about their background in order to obtain such a position shows that they don't deserve it, irrespective of their performance on the job.
A companion subject is that of qualifications, and their value for those who acquire them legitimately. Should we allow putative engineers, medical doctors, attorneys, therapists, police officers, scientists, teachers, etc., continue to practice after a fraud is exposed in their resume, even if they're good at what they do? You can't just "pretend" to be what you're not and justify the lie later by doing the job well.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Why would you need a degree to be dean of admissions for a safety school?
"Reality is that many MANY people self educate or get education from the "school of life" that is far more comprehensive and rounded than anything you get in a institution for around $100K or more plus a few years of your life."
And the reality is, that many MANY people who self educate don't fucking LIE about it. I've worked for years in telecom without a degree and never lied about it. Hmmm? Wasn't necessary.
"Question is, why did it take 28 years?"
"Answer: because the person who hired her lied about THEIR qualifications - they can't read."
You reply may be supposed to be humorous but either way, respectfully, I'll disagree. I think it's because 28 years ago people didn't put as much effort into checking references as they generally do now. Also, take into consideration that her position 28 years ago was more than likely entry level, not nearly the same scrutiny is applied. These days, anyone applying for the position of dean of admissions for MIT would certainly have some critical examination applied to their resume. References would be checked and transcripts requested.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
"Okay, I call bullshit. You clearly don't know anything about MIT, and have an axe to grind when it comes to academics.
Fact 1: MIT has granted Full Professorships to people without degrees. They care about performance and ability more than about degrees.
Fact 2: They also care about integrity. A place like MIT earns and maintains its reputation based on both the quality and the integrity of the work done there. Integrity is where the dean screwed up, and why she is being canned."
Thank you for showing how institutions like MIT maintain their reputation as true educational institutions. If our public schools systems were willing to grant teaching certificates to those with the aptitude, necessary knowledge, and desire to teach instead of requiring any bogus bachelor's degree plus classes in "edumication", we probably wouldn't be graduating so many kids with a high school diploma who are functionally illiterate and unable to make change even with a cash register doing the calculating. In my opinion, that is why there is so little integrity to the US public school system.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Perhaps you missed a comma, or perhaps you've invented the most thankless job ever: sitting on top of the elevator as it gently rises and falls, waiting to dive underneath it to save some hapless licensed elevator inspector who happens to slip and fall below.
I'm also dismayed by the number of people who seem to think it's unimportant if the Dean of Admissions at MIT lied to get a job at MIT.
Then again, this is Slashdot, where there are hundreds of people who don't have a degree, who have a massive chip on their shoulders about the way they think they are treated. In any discussion of computer science education, for example, you'll have hundreds of postings saying that CS is irrelevant to working in software. It's not altogether surprising that the same people see nothing wrong with lying about having a degree in order to get around some perceived unfairness.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
My take on this is that she lied.
Misrepresentation is never a good idea.
It does call into question though degree requirements to obtain or do a particular job function.
Obviously, you do not need the degrees the university requires to do the job she was doing for the past 10 years, let alone 28.
i think this is a good thing, because University Degrees are increasingly only for the rich and well off.
How many can afford to go to a University school and take 5 years off and go to class every day and accept the "financial serfdom" that comes with graduation.
It would seem in most jobs that I have interviewed for in my past, University Degree requirements where mostly "justifying" well, the university or government institution I was applying for.
Some do not even consider my references or accomplishments for the job I am applying for.
I personally believe that University Degrees or any restrictions that come with job applications are simply a method by society to control a limited number of resources. (i.e. Jobs that we can provide for societies members that have decent health care and salaries.)
I am having ethical problems as well with these sorts of approaches to job and candidate selections because University Degrees are increasingly for those who can pay, and those who can't, well....sorry.
Universities are suppose to be institutions of learning for the spiritual and intellectual advancement of the human condition. When you start preventing people from pursuing those aspirations over cash, I find it ethically problematic.
So when you are looking at that college graduate keep in mind, your looking at someone who was selected partly by the fact he could pay the fees, probably not because he is outstanding or the brightest there is out there.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Actually I do because I see engineers who stopped at their BSE or MSE and got in the field and are actually making money for the company with new ideas and designs get shafted, while bullshit artists like the company's "technologist" that has multiple PHD's and is the biggest bullshitter I have ever met get's a high 6 figure income.
Every person outside of science that has advanced degrees typically are bullshitters that really do not know what the hell they are talking about.
This piece of crap (and every other "technologist" I have ever met) is a useless piece of meat that spews forth useless information and speculation that is more accurate if you used a Magic 8 ball. THAT is the product of higher academics, not useful people.
Wait wouldn't that revoke their accreditation? I am pretty sure having all professors with a degree equal or higher then the degrees they teach for was a requirement of accreditation.
"Fact 1: MIT has granted Full Professorships to people without degrees."
Can you cite an example, please?
So, if you are on the candidate search board for a new Dean of Admissions at MIT, and you are thus spending other people's money in your search, and you bother to ask the prospective candidates what degree they have . . . aren't you stealing ?
"William Barton Rogers, 1804-1882, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was educated at the College of William and Mary but apparently did not receive a degree."
Question is, why did it take 28 years?
I think the better question is: "Who cares? She was apparently doing a good job, or she would have already been fired; who gives a f%!# if she lied about paper credentials?"
I mean, really, what's more important... having paper credentials, or actually being able to "get the job done?"
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
I have looked at MITs tech job postings, and one thing that really stood out is that they seem to be looking for Skillset, not degree. Many/most companies post job postings saying "BS EE/CS" blah blah, MIT seemed to say "If you know how to do X, apply for job Y".
I actually thought that was kind of progressive for an engineering school. Especially when, you're right, some engineers can be pretty biased against people they see as being Children of a Lesser God.
Honestly, I believe it's because she lied. It's not like she could have held that position for 28 years if she wasn't good at it. That has nothing to do with anything, it's that she misrepresented herself and MIT seems to have standards for conduct and honesty.
I like music
And if she's been incompetent for all this time, then the people who supervised and reviewed her work for all this time should be FIRED IMMEDIATELY!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
look down their nose at non degree holders
A degree used to be something special; now "everyone's" got one (apparently, they can also be purchased), so where's the cachet? The best reason today to be a university graduate is for the connections.
"Wait wouldn't that revoke their accreditation? I am pretty sure having all professors with a degree equal or higher then the degrees they teach for was a requirement of accreditation."
I believe there are multiple accreditations for colleges/universities. Which one(s) are you referring to?
If an honorary degree was conferred, does that count?
From Wikipedia, an often valid source, "MIT is governed by a 78-member board of trustees known as the MIT Corporation[47] which approve the budget, degrees, and faculty appointments as well as electing the President." If the MIT Corporation approves someone who does not have a degree as a faculty appointment, does that cause them to lose their accreditation? Would someone like Bill Gates, who has three honorary doctorates cause an educational institution to lose their accreditation if he were to teach there? While Bill Gates may be a somewhat controversial example, it's difficult to say that any institution of higher learning would be less than proud to say that he is a member of the faculty. My point is that I can't see any school losing accreditation for having some oddball on their faculty as long as the majority of their faculty meet the status quo.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
I have a Masters in Computer Science; so I think I know what it is.
The person with the PhD didn't have a clue about topics such as Computer Architecture, Programming Languages, Operating Systems, or Distributed Systems because they never took a class about it or bothered to learn on their own. How can you be an expert in Computer Science and think that only one client can communicate with a web server at a time!?!
This person was only an expert at mathematics and using AI techniques to solve math problems.
A PhD is as much about doing research in a lab as about playing politics to get your wagon hitched to a Professor on the rise, play politics to get the foreign student in the group do the shitty jobs (after all he cant work off campus), writing up nicely written funding proposals, budget that money, lobby for funding, network for postdoc positions. All of these teach skills which are usefull for the technologist or chief mentor or Standards body member kind of positions in Industry. Sure you as a BSE or a MSE may be better at the day to day technical job but the PhD is always going to be trusted with the higher positions because executives understand that PhDs already know how to play the politics and networking game and also they had the stick to itiveness to survive 6 years of crap.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Accreditation organizations and MIT are known to play something like the game of "chicken" with each other. Basically, if one of them, especially in the field of engineering, were to pull MIT's accreditation, it would reflect a lot more on the org than on MIT, and so they tend to work out accommodations when e.g. their educational philosophy/pedagogy significantly differs with MIT's.
One frequent example is whomever accredits the EECS department. At least in times past, they had an obsession with "teaching design". EECS does not believe you can teach design per se, there is no specific design only course, although many that include teaching design in the context of what else the course is teaching. So they run around looking at the required courses and assign design credits to each one, totalling enough to satisfy the org.
I can just imagine MIT's reaction if such an org said of a professor who'd been vetted by his department, school (engineering, science, etc.) and the visiting committee for the department, "I'm sorry, you're just going to have to fire him because he doesn't have sufficient credentials...." ^_^
I wonder how many of the professional SF authors who have taught at the Institute had PhDs in English? Few, if any, I'd suspect. As noted, MIT cares a lot more about what you can do that credentials. MIT for the most part is a place about actually doing things, not piling up credentials, useless papers and books, etc.
If she was good at her job, she should continue doing it.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
If she did a good job for 30 years, then are College degrees not worth the paper they're printed on? The irony is thick at ole MIT. Maybe Hawking can deconstruct that chicken and egg scenario while still maintaining MIT's credibility.
Oh, and let's not forget really successful people. The richest man in existence, perhaps? Yea, let's not go there. The jist is, from what I've seen is this. People who don't get to sit on their sheepskin, work harder because of it. Quite the conundrum.
Maybe they can make a degree for people who don't have degrees and yet are more successful because of it. Or maybe we should judge people by what they do, rather than what their parents could afford when they're college age. Just a thought. But cattle branding is so much easier when you hire someone- isn't it.
And just a look back a few year, it's a good thing Abe Lincoln formed his own opinions in a log cabin, and that Edgar Allen Poe was kicked out of the University of Virginia for crappy grades. What unconsumer-like idiots these legends are. They would have gotten their work done properly if they had a degree from a certified/set curriculum.
Putin has been accused of plagiarism by fellows at the Brookings Institution who allege that large chunks of Putin's economics dissertation on planning in the natural resources sector were lifted from a management text published by two University of Pittsburgh academics nearly 20 years earlier.
It is pretty sad that a site that claims to be news for nerds is so rabidly anti-intellectual.
This points to a larger issue. People from good schools, become professors at bad ones. People who graduate from bad schools become staff at good ones like MIT.
How is this important? Because all the best psychology graduates went into private practice. The failures became school counselors at Virginia Tech.
"Fact 1: MIT has granted Full Professorships to people without degrees."
Can you cite an example, please?
I don't believe that Ed Fredkin has any degrees (except probably honorary ones, I've seen him titled as "Dr." and he is certainly deserving), but he was appointed a full professor at MIT in electrical engineering in the sixties, while on his way to becoming a pioneer in artificial intelligence (reversible computing, the Fredkin Gate, etc.) and establishing his concept ("digital physics/philosophy") that the universe can be represented as a discrete/finite cellular automata, or essentially as a computer program. He dropped out of Caltech at 19 to become a fighter pilot and built his experience at MIT Lincoln Labs and through a career as an early computer entrepreneur, working with the PDP-1. He has held other positions as a professor in physics and is currently a "Distinguished Career Professor" at Carnegie Mellon.
I'm certain there are other examples where MIT professors lacked advanced degrees particularly in the early computing days and where successful entrepreneurs have returned for appointments. Certainly this is common at Ivy league schools such as Harvard where former politicians and other notable figures frequently hold appointments. To someone's point about accreditation, certainly the qualifications of the faculty are an important component but this does not generally require that 100% of teaching or research staff hold advanced degrees, particularly if they have practical experience and/or published research.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Though that was not a main factor, it certainly played a certain role. You overstating that do not deserve slapping you with "Troll" moderation. May be "Overrated". I think the Troll and Flamebait categories should be removed and people should just use Overrated category.
Slapping someone (instead of the message, BTW) as Troll and Flamebait is trollish and flamebaitant by itself.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Why did it take 28 years? My guess would be that she was good at her job, so no-one felt the need to verify her qualifications.
Which just goes to show that the presence of, or absence of, qualifications tells you diddly-squat about someone's actual abilities.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Far too many years ago I left school at 16, one of the first jobs I had was picking tulip bulbs, a mind numbingly boring job. One day the guy who drove the truck that picked up the crates from the field suddenly quit. The farmer came down to field I was working and asked the pickers if anyone could drive a truck, I shot upright and started lying through my teeth and walking towards him. He walked me over to the truck and got in with me in the drivers seat. After I had spent a few minutes bunny hoping the truck and failing to actually to get it mobile, he said something like - "If your man enough to fess up now, I will teach you to drive the truck", I did and he kept his promise.
/oblig. car (truck) analogy
The fact that MIT has an excellent global reputation is evidence enough she can not only do the "driving", but can do it well enough that nobody thought to double-check her claims.
Getting fired is a pretty minimal punishment. Lots of people who commit fraud go to jail.
I belive she "fell on her sword", and that is the "proper" thing to do in such embarassing circumstances ( Wolfowitz would do the same if he had an honorable bone in his body ). It would be a different matter had she knowingly put poeple or assets in danger (eg: doctor, accountant, pilot), but AFAIK she did the opposite. Insinuating that someone should go to jail for demonstratably harmless bullshit they wrote on a resume 30-fucking-years ago is so outrageous that some might wonder what similar deed you may be hiding? As for ethics - if you take them out of context they become dogma. Society itself does not use the same set of mores they did 30yrs ago, back then I was "living in sin", worse still I was freinds with an openly gay guy.
BTW: The woman I was living with became my wife for 20yrs, the gay guy got into hard drugs and died of a heroine overdose, the tulip bulb season ended and I got a "respectable" job hacking down 350yr old trees in a temperate rainforest.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Someone should tag this as irony.
...we see "Emperor Credentials" has no clothes. I wonder how many brilliant men and women have been denied access to an MIT education based on the delusion that they actually can identify the excellent from paper?
E Proelio Veritas.
..can't change their shit spots..
There has been much rotten at MIT, from the suicide rate, to historical under promotion/payment of women, to the low gift rate from grad students, to their lack of policies to protect fucked over students.
So it's not about whether this woman can do the job. The same idiots that hired her were responsible for her rewards. Instead this fraud has made the final decision on thousands of students, staining their degree with the shit of her lies.
She should not have been given the opportunity to resign. She should have been fired, her pension stripped. Unfortunaetly, MIT hardly has any specific policies to police corrupt faculty so they are probably lucky she resigned.
The students of MIT are it's great resource, but MIT doesn't protect them at all. Apparently that now applies to applicant pool.
Very funny, but while Caltech is generally considered to be the superior science school (although check out the current USNews ratings of graduate science programs, rather surprising!), it's nothing compared to MIT in engineering, and I don't think either schools even pretend to compete against each other in the latter.
When was the last time you heard of something interesting in the general area of CS come out of Caltech? Only thing I can think of is Wolfram's first mathematics program (SMP, although that came from their Physics department), and Caltech screwed up the licensing of that (in the early '80s) so badly he decamped and eventually rewrote it from scratch.
Sounds a bit like how the U. of Pennsylvania in 1946 destroyed their chance to become a world leader in computer design and development. While a lot of professors don't like MIT's technology licensing program (especially before it got reformed from its total incompetence for all parties concerned) it is at least well established and understood by all parties concerned.
I don't care if they're good at their job. If they lie about credentials, research, or anything else that matters, they should be canned. This is quite simply so that people with qualifications who aren't liars can get the job. There are people beating the doors down for these jobs. And such lying might well be the tip of the iceberg. At any rate, such a lack of integrity should be punished, not winked at, especially given the cynicism in industry, politics, the media, you name the spot, about lying.
Those degrees are worth something. I dont' think it's right for someone to lie about their work and have the lie accepted, effectively peeing in the face of everyone who actually DID the work.
I also think hysterics like Gilcrhist here the UI should be canned. I think faculty who abuse grad students should be canned. The list goes on. I'll summarize it: there are a lot of incompetent, lazy, cruel, idiotic, arrogant, dishonest, or greedy faculty who should be canned. There are simply too many good young people in these fields. Good lord, tenure is great for protecting Frankenstein from the torch-bearing mob, but I wish there were a way to clean up all the dead wood in our universities.
One of the problems is it takes so long to untrain, then retrain, the grads. They're usually either pissed off or in denial when confronted with the fact that they spent years and money and sweat to learn stuff that was, in many cases, obsolete when they first applied to their school.
Almost everyone "puffs up" their resume. A good first step would be for people to stop handing out resumes in the first place. Or at the very least STOP PUTTING YOUR HOBBIES AND OTHER INTERESTS AND PERSONAL SHIT IN THEM!!! It just gives another reason to toss them in the bin as "freaking amateur". Also, don't try to make your labs sound lie they were real-world work. Trying to pass off your coursework as "real experience" is double-dipping (you already got "credit" for it with your sheepskin) as well as easy to see - 20 resumes, all with the same "coded x,y,z applications for the abc industry" ... zzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzz ... boring!
One time, I happened upon the resume of our top honcho at our Bangalore office. It says that he graduated from "IIT". I found it strange that a person who graduated from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology would simply abbreviate the school's name. Most would think to write down the name in its entirety to milk it for all it's worth.
:-)
A google search or two later, I saw that "IIT" meant online degree from "Illinois Institute of Technology". Quite different than the other IIT.
Technically, he didn't lie.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
If one US acedemic is lying about their qualifications, and a high profile one at that, it is wise to assume potentially ALL US acedemic personnel are lying about their qualifications as there is clearly no valid vetting process to prove otherwise. Is this a job for the NSA? hmmmm...
The purpose of existence is to make money.
If he were to be teaching computer security or safe coding practices, what do YOU think?
On the other hand, if he were to be teaching Propaganda 101 ...
I'm suing for wrongful admission. Someone with valid credentials would have sent me packing.
Richard Stallman said that this won't happen again if MIT licenses their degrees under the new GPLv3.
In Soviet MIT, resume terminates YOU!
When asked to comment, the former Dean said "Only old Koreans need resumes."
Then Netcraft confirmed it - "MIT Dean of Admissions dying ..."
SCO announced they'll sue both the former dean and MIT for violation of their "Intellectual Property" - specifically, "method and procedure to obtain money you don't have the paperwork for", citing their lawsuits against Novell and IBM even though SCO doesn't have the copyrights to Unix, or any documented proof. BF&S took the lawsuit - fees are capped at $2.47 or SCO's net worth, whichever is greater.
Fox is making a movie of the week about the whole scandal - they're trying to get Nathalie Portman to do the "younger Dean of Admissions" with hot grits
When told the news, Steve Ballmer misunderstood, and thought that MIT had been bought by Google. "I'll f*cking bury them! I've buried better schools than MIT!" New chairs have been ordered.
The Department of Homeland Security raised the threat level to red, and sent Immigration to arrest the former Dean. "We heard she's an undocumented worker; she's obviously a long-term mole, probably from the former Soviet Union, if she's been there for 28 years. We're working now to see which terrorist organisation she's currently aligned with."
Steve Jobs announced his new product at MacWorld - the iDegree. It will allow you to download your favourite transcripts, grades, courses, and graduate degrees into your own iResume.
I say she starts a company with Doctor Robert "a new fact has now become painfully clear to me: you don't say you have the Ph.D unless you REALLY have the Ph.D" Cringely.
What a college degree shows:
The reason employers like college degrees is not merely because it shows the candidate's intellectual ability. The college experience happens to filter out those people who would not be well-suited to a desk job, where you have to take initiative to get things done, to work without supervision, and keep yourself current in the discipline.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
"managers hand out promotions like candy to a degree holder"
Not from what I've seen in my 27 years of professional experience in IT.
I have a friend who started out in IT the time as I did. He never even graduated high-school, I went on to complete 8 years of post-secondary education, completing a degree in business, and a degree in math with a concentration in comp. sci. Then I took enough extra units for a degree in comp. sci. and completed graduate work in project management, and about half a dozen certs. And I worked in IT while I completed my education.
My friend earns twice as much as I do. While I was wasting my time, effort, and money, on formal educatiion - which is useless for IT - my friend could concentrate on getting valuable experience. For me, trying to study, and work, made both suffer.
Look at the job boards - they want experience in several specializations, they don't care about formal education.
I have worked in a lot of places, I have never seen "managers hand out promotions like candy to a degree holder." Usually, I see degree and non-degree working shoulder to shoulder, getting the same pay. Only the guy with degree is older, and poorer - if he had to put himself though.
Where is the compassion, mercy, a sense of humor? Her life is destroyed. For a rule. Her performance wasn't an issue.
Rules are made to serve people. We don't live to serve the rules. You all seem take a deep pleasure in hurting people.
As noted, MIT cares a lot more about what you can do that credentials. MIT for the most part is a place about actually doing things, not piling up credentials, useless papers and books, etc.
Perhaps this is the public face that MIT (and many other institutions) puts on. However, and I realize that I am only one data point, I have quite the opposite experience with the culture that does value prestige more than substance:
Years ago, when I graduated among the top of the class of a very large high school (if high schools can indeed be prestigious, and they really cannot, then this one would certainly qualify, boasting numerous perfect ACT and SAT scores, a handful of National Merit Scholars, as well as a very robust Advanced Placement program), bearing all sorts of honors and a membership to the Gifted and Talented program, MIT didn't waste time recruiting the top of the class and aggressively filling our mailboxes with promotional brochures. I knew that I couldn't afford to live in Boston at the time and I had the promise of a good scholarship from a respectable university, and so I chose to apply to the less expensive school rather than pay the $200 application fee charged by several of the big-name universities that were recruiting us. I feel as though I got a fine education. Many of my professors had obtained degrees from or taught at the other universities, and very few times did I feel that I was robbed of proper education (quantum physics being one of those unfortunate times when the professor didn't hold up his end of the deal; the school was informed by the students taking the course, we taught ourselves the material or picked it up in follow-on courses, and the professor was not there the following semester, but that is a different topic for a different time), I had professors teaching my courses rather than TAs or RAs, and I had the opportunity for more one-on-one time with the professors that I may not have gotten if I were sitting in a class with 300 other students. All-in-all, I felt that I made the right decision for me, and never expected to experience problems as a result of my choices.
Fast forward to the end of my three-or-so years at university. I was on the verge of graduating with my engineering degree (early), and was in the process of closing out a second engineering degree--no small feat, in my very biased opinion. I had worked on several extensive research topics (including some that crossed paths with MIT.) The company I was interning with sent me to Boston for a conference, and I thought it a good chance to stop by MIT, to see what their graduate school might offer. I was greeted in the office of one of the engineering schools, and spoke with someone. The meeting didn't last long. One of the first questions the woman asked was: Which university are you attending? I told her, and she immediately shut down. Mind you, she was polite, but instead of asking about my qualifications, my test scores, my life experience, my research, or the content of my studies, she (openly) labeled me as an "unknown quantity" (because she didn't immediately recognize my university) and expressed that my odds for admission were not good. I persisted that I had a deep interest in the subject matter, measurable success in the area, research, teaching and mentoring experience with the subject, and a proven academic record. She, and I am paraphrasing here, expressed that because I didn't complete my undergraduate studies at MIT or one of the "big schools" (that she had in her mind), she doubted the ability of an unknown quantity to come in and perform at the level of MIT students. That seems pretty clear to me--she had no interest in what I had done or could bring to the table, and didn't even attempt to find out; the encounter was a waste of both of our time. I walked through the door as bright and enthusiastic a young female engineer as I could be, motivated and ready to shine, and having previously been courted by this school, but I left feeling that
Seriously, this should be rated 5.
I should point out though, that according to the headline, she wasn't fired. She resigned.
So it may not be a question of justice in this case as much as her own embarrassment.
Still, nicely said.
So you were so insecure about your own abilities and decisions that you let a perceived, unspoken slight from some random office worker at MIT scar you for life? And generalized that slight from one bitchy administrative assistant to the entire world of prestigious universities? I do hope you've gotten over that by now, or that you can at least restrain yourself from making life miserable for others in retaliation for this terrible, humiliating non-experience. I'm certain the people you encounter care far less about the name on your diploma than that enormous chip on your shoulder.
A very quick reply, as I need a piece of information before I can make a substantive reply: what field are you in? E.g. EE, CS, MechE?
And I'm sorry to tell you and anyone else this, but if no one knows the professors who taught you as an undergraduate, your chances of getting into a top graduate program in ANY technical field are low, exactly because you are a total unknown, and departments can afford to make only a few such bets. That woman was fully aware of this reality, and that's why you got such treatment: if you were specifically enquiring about grad school at MIT you were wasting her time. At least she was polite about this brutal reality....
The local barely above a community college in my home town sends about one science (biology or chemistry) graduate a generation to MIT, and one of my best chemistry TAs came from such a school, but ... engineering is different, we don't agree on hardly as much as the sciences do.
Also, it is generally the case that MIT students have better things to do with our time than enter into competitions. We are sufficiently connected to industry (from the very start of the Institute), and in a sufficiently "industrial" and entrepreneurial area that we tend to get work or research experience (both of which have formal programs) instead of doing competitions. Perhaps my bias from the foot I have in EECS is showing, but competitions have no weight in those fields at MIT.
The only exception I am familiar with is the solar car group as of the late '80s plus or minus (and that is in part a special case, one of their leaders was a polymath fellow classmate who went on to become a professor), but I'll admit I don't pay much attention to that side of things....
More later after you tell me which field you're in.
Just doing her job.
Thank-you for the response!
;) By stating that a university always cares about substance over prestige is (unintentionally) disingenuous. The culture is there, and I was the unlucky one to encounter it on that day. On another day, I probably received job offers because my own school happens to be well-known for certain specializations, which I pursued and made contacts through.
I endeavored to leave specific faculties out of the above comment because I didn't want my single data point to reflect on those colleges as a whole, understanding that this culture I speak of is only resident in the system, but does not completely compose it. With that disclaimer, I will be more specific. My first engineering degree was in electrical engineering, and I was also finishing a degree in mechanical engineering at the time. I was specifically interested in pursuing electrical engineering at that time.
This was not a barely above-community-college-level school from which I was graduating; it was a nationally recognized private university which leads the nation in one of its other engineering disciplines (although not EE or ME specifically), but is certainly not MIT nor Virginia Tech, and doesn't carry the universal recognition that these two schools carry. I could speak to your average person on the street about MIT, and they will already have a general idea of the school, regardless of whether they know the difference between a mechanical engineer and a mechanic or an electrical engineer and an electrician; my school probably wouldn't carry that same recognition outside of certain industry circles. My school was, on the other hand, one of those schools where a 32 on your ACT (nothing to really raise eyebrows at, but not too shabby either) would not earn you a full ride, as it would at many schools; in fact, a National Merit Scholar friend of mine that scored nearly perfectly on his ACTs and was a viola prodigy wasn't sure about his scholarship chances at one point. Although ignorance of my school's name would be understandable, I believe my academic record would at least merit some investigation were one willing to go so far as to meet with me, or perhaps even humoring a chance for me to sell it would have been, at least, non-offensive.
As mentioned before, many of the professors from my school graduated from or taught at some of the more prestigious schools, and continued to conduct research with several departments at MIT. My university was simply not as picky about who went into what program, or at least it seemed that way, and I never encountered a case where it was otherwise. Some people may go through their entire careers at MIT, depending on who they interact with, and feel the same about their school; for all I know, there was an elitist culture somewhere in my own school, and I simply was ignorant of it. Of course, this isn't about selling my school (although I am slowly going down that tangent it seems.) I do not believe that one is superior to the other, necessarily, in all respects. I readily admit to MIT having a stronger graduate program in electrical engineering, or else I wouldn't have shown interest. As I mentioned, I am simply providing one data point where I know the case of substance (or paper creds) over prestige to be untrue about MIT, and many other organizations. It might sound like I am bemoaning the idea that name-recognition gets you places in society; I really do not mean to, although it certainly sounds that way from my above statements. I have directly benefited through dropping names and utilizing professional networks myself, but I wouldn't pretend that it was otherwise; you mention that MIT is quite connected in the industrial sector from day one, and I respond that mine was as well, although perhaps not as aggressively so. I am have worked amongst MIT grads as well as graduates from my own university, afterall.
The competition point, as I stated, was admittedly a petty one. I assure you that MIT did have a stake in it (I can
I wouldn't say that it scarred me for life. I was only recounting one experience in response to a post stating something opposite of my own experiences, and stating my own lack of surprise at the situation with the Dean; I was admittedly intimidated by the woman's response (I won't pretend that I wasn't), and probably wasn't equipped to handle it in the same way that I would be today (I was barely three years out of high school, and more wrapped up in the challenges of double-majoring in engineering disciplines, conducting research, and carrying an internship than I was concerned with learning how to not internalize the statements of people like these--I lived and breathed engineering, after all), but I think you either misread the intentions of my post or perhaps I wasn't clear. Rereading, there is a definite hostile tone there which wasn't intended. I elaborated here, and perhaps that will give you a better feel of my thoughts.
I am not sure where you got the idea that I was speaking to a "random office worker" or "administrative assistant"; I quite purposely did not indicate the exact position of the person involved, because I wanted the freedom to elaborate later (see my other response) without calling out someone in particular. I suppose this invites speculation. The idea is to focus on this culture rather than one individual as my intention is not to grind axes; rather, I wanted to dispel the notion that decisions are always made on substance rather than by prestige or credentials. Basically, I was stating the obvious. As I mentioned in a follow-up post, I regard many of the opportunities that have befallen me in life to have come from who I knew or where I was at at the time.
I also did not intend to generalize her opinion to the entire world of prestigious universities, although it reads that way in my above statement. My point was supposed to be tempered by stating:
"I realize that I am only one data point"
"staggered about their school" I was unclear; I mean here that I know it doesn't compose the whole of the school, but the culture can be found in some areas, through certain individuals.
"isn't the opinion of everyone at MIT"
"culture is certainly present in some circles there"
As for your comment in which you suggested that I "restrain [myself] from making life miserable for others in retaliation for this terrible, humiliating non-experience", I think that is uncalled for. I was recounting an experience that was in direct opposition to the assertion made by the parent post, and instead of responding "Nuh uh!" (which is equally as bad as "me too!") I instead chose to describe why I didn't agree. I am just one of those people that (unfortunately) run on two pages in my endeavor to do so. I don't think I gave the impression that I thought retaliation was necessary. In fact, I believe that I said, "And the graduates of the more "prestigious" universities are great people, and I don't hold against them the culture of the good old boy network that is staggered about their school, unless they have bought into it as well." I admit the last part of that sentence might seem contradictory to the first, but basically the statement isn't to say I hold against people their use of professional networks or paper creds to get ahead in life (I have already admitted that part of my success can be traced to this as well), its the idea of the "level of the MIT student" being unattainable by someone who has done comparable research is silly. There are indeed schools which are better at some things, but not everyone they produce is golden, and not everyone who didn't start on this path is precluded from being able to rise to it. I am not a unique snowflake, either, for that matter.
Luckily, most people tend to get this, and university affiliation (among those who don't buy into "the Idea") becomes a near non-issue within a year after graduation, just
Wow, you do realize that by having a chance to collaborate with the quasi-ultimate polymath Jerry Lettvin you are more fortunate than 99.99% of your colleagues? He is a very special person, "quite a personality" indeed ^_^! (I see that I have to add a couple of anecdotes to his Wikipedia entry.)
Unfortunately, I'm going to move to close debate (after unfairly unloading on you below :-) on the grounds that I don't debate (unless it's truly important) people who debate unfairly. To wit:
That is indeed true. Fortunately, I did not make such a broad statement, and to construe what I said as applying to every member of the MIT community (roughly 30,000 people) for all periods of time is frankly beyond the pale.
Of course there's going to be exceptions; you're an EE, you can even suggest some likely probability distributions. The fact that you had one bad experience with one person in a situation where you admit you may not have projected very well, and to a rather rare bird (at any school), the woman EE---well ... I'm pretty much at a loss for words. Surely if you cared enough about this (and I sense in your writing that you do care very much) you could have collected some more data points?
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with her, but I re-emphasize the point I don't think you quite got. Or rather, let me turn it around. Here's the 99.99% sure way of getting into a grad school: you get one of the professors to say "Admit this person, I'm going to advise and fund him (i.e. bring him into my research group)."
Now, how do you accomplish that? Obviously, the professor has to know you well, or absolutely trust the judgement of someone who knows you well. It's a "web of trust" sort of thing, and yes, it's unfair to schools and departments that are small and obscure, but the professors in a department have to be very careful in who they choose for the limited number of graduate student slots they have (also remember these slots are limited by the funds they can bring in).
And they're very limited in MIT's EECS department, because while MIT doesn't restrict admission based on undergraduate major, and at the time you visited EECS probably had around 40% of the undergraduates (!!!), it's very conservative about letting a department grow before the field has shown it has very long term staying power. Aero/Astro is a very sobering example, for anyone who remembers the early '70s bust, and now EECS looks to be following it.
Yes, research is going to be healthy in the fancy building that was forced upon the CS community, but if they had been allowed to bulk up enough to match the undergraduates they struggled to teach, well, I suspect things would be very ugly today. Even MIT can attract only so much research funding, especially in a secular downturn of the economy and a worse one in these fields.
I wonder if you had approached her with "thus and so professor [at my school] who has done research with thus and so professor [at MIT]" if it might have gone better, except:
Your point that denigrates the concept of people being at the "level of an MIT student" shows you don't "get it", you don't understand something that makes MIT MIT. I personally don't believe MIT has a harsh culture (although I saw many people who through their own lenses perceived it as such), but it is an extremely demanding one.
I would describe MIT's true undergraduate educational philosophy at its base with three words, all equally important: mens, manus and firehose. The first two are from the school motto, "Mens et Manus" (which is Latin for "Mind and Hand"). MIT believes that anythi
you do realize that by having a chance to collaborate with the quasi-ultimate polymath Jerry Lettvin you are more fortunate than 99.99% of your colleagues?
:) Well, not anymore. I suppose one could say "once an EE, always an EE," but like many engineers eventually find themselves, I rarely play with the toys anymore. ;) But I am definitely still a woman. haha. And I still have my own analog oscilloscope, Fluke multimeter, and power supplies, and probably have a version of PSpice hanging around here somewhere, so that should at least count for geek points, if nothing else.
No, I actually didn't realize this. I realized that he was quite impressive and had written some incredible things (his apparently very famous paper "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain" was the very first paper I read upon starting my new research project. My adviser and I were trying to map the "electrical signals" between the frogs eye and and its brain, and compare this with the way human eye/brain interaction occurs, with the idea of creating artificial vision), but when you put it that way, I do feel very fortunate. To be fair, my speaking to him was less collaboration than it was my picking his brain for his expertise. My adviser may have had more dealings, but mine was mostly to ask him questions. I remember the first time he said hello on the telephone...I didn't know what to say. I felt utterly stupid when faced with his expertise, and was already taken aback by the sound of his voice. It was a good learning experience, nonetheless. Thank-you for pointing me toward his wikipedia entry; although I suspected that he was very respectable and probably carried name recognition, I really had no idea.
Fortunately, I did not make such a broad statement
Rereading, I see that you did not. Either I missed the qualifications in your statement, or I combined your statement with that of another and reacted to a false position. As I do not see the post I might have combined with your own, I will proceed assuming that it doesn't exist and that I simply misread your statement. For that, I apologize.
and to a rather rare bird (at any school), the woman EE
Much like myself.
Surely if you cared enough about this (and I sense in your writing that you do care very much) you could have collected some more data points?
I care much less now about the specific situation than I did then, but I suppose that I do care that people realize the constructs in which they are hired and educated; less so for seeing it stop, because I believe it is inherent in the system and perhaps a necessary part of it, but more so with the hopes that people will be able to recognize this, and know when they have directly benefited from or been hurt by it. I must admit, though, that I would like to see cases where it is unfairly applied without any flexibility stop. It is important to know why people act the way that they do; in this case, the Dean probably felt that her merits would not be received in a way that reflected her true performance potential, and so she found a dishonest way to achieve her education. I simply walked away and found a different solution.
I started this thread with the (contrary) intent of providing an opposing single data point, perhaps arguing for the sake of arguing, assuming that it wouldn't be read at the AC threshold, and it grew to a much longer thread than I intended. Insert some great responses on your part, and the result is that I have devoted much more thought into this than I had intended, and ended up recounting something that I hadn't thought about in a long time. You have given one of the most well thought-out responses that I have received on Slashdot; so, silly as it might sound, I think I just enjoyed getting a chance to respond to someone who isn't obviously trolling.
You are correct in that I didn't collect other data points. Perhaps it is laziness, but I didn't feel it necessary since I w
Given the games with admissions, maybe it is time to start thinking about removing exclusivity from higher education versus adding more? The only good thing out of this would be to get a replacement who could work towards this goal by discouraging "class building". At this point, it'd be better to take a hit in ratings, and turn the focus on the academic part(not the financial or exclusivist part) - where one has only the focus to learn.
The other option would just be that one would be only able to declare that one has obtained a degree, but cannot declare where. If there are any concerns of someone's reputation, have them take it up with the relevant authorities who could provide the yes/no answer (and nothing more).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Hmmm; I haven't studied other engineering schools (I'm really a chemist who due to finances ended up programming), but MIT is very explicit about this, in both science and engineering. I distinctly remember being told about it as a freshman, and it being repeated later on.
And it was tied together with the "firehose": one of the things MIT teaches you perforce (or at least insures you can do) is how to learn quickly. In a work world that changes so quickly, it's a necessary career survival trait.
I will note they do ease into this at the freshman level. Today, the first term is still graded pass/fail, and in my time both terms. You are given time for the wrenching adjustment to college life at a boarding school, starting with a whole week up front devoted just to that, and plenty of support and understanding is given, especially if your freshman advisor(s) are any good. But you are expected to "stand and perform" ^_^, as you must, for it will most certainly happen in the real world sooner or later.
More later after I wake up.
I have two balls. Perhaps you'd like to suck them?