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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.
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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 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.
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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.
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from The Tech, the student newspaper: http://www-tech.mit.edu/V127/N21/jones.html
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.
Under some circumstances, it probably would not have been the end of the world. It certainly deserves a reprimand under any circumstance, but perhaps not sacking her altogether. The real issue is that this woman was the dean of admissions. You can't have someone who lied to get into their position be responsible for admissions. The kind of message it would have sent would have been intolerable. It isn't a hard leap to rationalize misrepresenting yourself on your entrance qualifications under the justification that the frigging dean of admissions did it too.
It is sad and perhaps a little telling about how much weight we give to pieces of paper, but people in positions of such responsibility can't lie about their credentials and then have the moral authority to demand that no one else does the same.
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.
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
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 ...
Because it did come out. How can she ask that kids applying not lie on their resumes if she did? It creates a standard that would make admissions to MIT almost impossible to administer. If it hadn't become public, maybe MIT could have dealt with the issue, although I'm not sure I would be comfortable as her supervisor continuing to supervise someone who lied on such a fundamental thing. You'd never know what else she lied about, and trust is important in all working relationships. Yeah, her 28 years of service and award show that a degree isn't that important for that kind of job, but honesty and credibility with the high schoolers are, and she's lost both of those.
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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.
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.
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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.
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She could go and work at Wikipedia!
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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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?
Because SOME of us actually place value on ethics. What message does it send to people by overlooking this type of behavior? Dishonesty will become the norm.
She screwed up... twenty... eight... years ago.
So, all is forgiven if enough time passes. Nice philosophy.
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.
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.
You don't have to use the term racist to describe anyone who is prejudiced. There is already a word that encompasses that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_(economics
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.
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.
I don't understand all this contention over the word "irony". As far as I know, it means words suggesting the opposite of their literal meaning, or, taken to a situation, an absurd incongruity between what's expected to happen and what actually happens (especially when that's the opposite). Even in Greek, we'd say that that situation is pretty ironic (because she came to be judging who got a degree while she had none or whatever).
I'm not trolling or anything, I actually have seen this many times and I would like to know why people argue that this usage of the word "irony" is not acceptable.
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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.
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.
"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."
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**
Conveniently, I also have an MSCS, so I think I also know what it is, and I suspect you may not. I suspect this from your line:
this Computer Scientist had never taken a CS class! He was just good at algorithms.
Algorithms are a fundamental part of computer science. They're so fundamental that computer science was a discipline before there actually were computers. I'll bet you Ada herself would be an awful programmer today (until she got the hang of it), but don't you dare say she didn't know computer science. Computer science is 50% automata theory, 20% algorithms, and 30% softer sciences, like HCI and cognitive science. What you're thinking of is software engineering, which is often what computer scientists end up doing, and because of that they usually offer many, many classes on it, but don't you dare say that you're not good at computer science just because you're not a software engineer.
That's as stupid as saying that Turing was a hack because he wasn't MSDN certified (and dude didn't even know C++!)
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 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.
"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.
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For what it's worth, I agree with you 100%. The problem is that "computer science" is so vaguely defined it's not even a useful term. There are only a few jobs for computer scientists, and even then, those jobs usually require you to be both a talented software engineer AND a computer scientist. We have a few of those types at Google and I have mad respect for their skillz, but they would never have been hired if they didn't know C++ or Java - it's that simple.
Unfortunately, there is a small but not insignificant part of the software development population who always had a greater love for the mathematical side of computing - in which there aren't many jobs - and were never that keen on the gritty details of how computers actually work. So they end up bitter and take every opportunity to "remind" people that computer science isn't about programming or systems architecture, it's just maths (ie, the part they like). They conveniently ignore that the popular definition of computer science is what's taught on computer science courses, which should be a whole mix of things.
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.