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?"

Comments

This means one of two things...

[brejc8]

Either: She is obviously good at her job and should keep it.
Or: University degrees aren't worth very much.

Re:This means one of two things...

[PatriceVignon]

Either: She is obviously good at her job and should keep it.
Or: University degrees aren't worth very much. No, that's not the point: her (first) position did not require a degree at all. In this article from the Boston Globe MIT says

Because the administrative assistant job for which she was being considered in 1979 did not require a degree, the university did not check Jones's academic credentials, said MIT chancellor Phillip L. Clay. If it were any other position, she should maybe be forgiven because of her strong performance. But since her job is to make sure that you do not lie on your application she was rightfully forced to quit.

Hypocrisy

[dshaw858]

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

Why it took so long

[Jazzer_Techie]

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.

Ohhh, so that's how it's done

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Your're right on both counts

[l2718]

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.

You know

[DarkOx]

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.

Re:It took 28 years because she is a woman.

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Let me get this straight

[shark swooner]

and perhaps a little telling about how much weight we give to pieces of paper

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_(economics)

Spence began his 1973 model with a hypothetical. Suppose that there are two types of employees -- good and bad -- and that employers are willing to pay a higher wage to the good type than the bad type. Spence assumes that for employers, there's no real way to tell in advance which employees will be of the good or bad type. Bad employees aren't really upset about this, because they get a free ride off of the hard work of the good employees. But good employees know that they deserve to be paid more for their effort, so they invest in the signal -- in this case, some amount of education. Spence assumes that education doesn't enhance the employee's productivity at all. But he does make one key assumption: good-type employees pay less for one unit of education than bad-type employees. This is not indicative of the cost of tuition and living expenses, as one would expect better employees to get educated at better and more expensive institutions. Rather, it is indicative of the opportunity cost that is paid by the time and effort invested into obtaining the education, which for a more efficient "good" employee, would be less than for a less efficient "bad" employee getting the same degree with the same grades from the same institution.

Spence discovered that even if education didn't contribute anything to an employee's productivity, good employees would still buy more education in order to signal their higher productivity to employers. (Economists sometimes call this the signalling hypothesis in education, often cited as a reason why government should not subsidize higher education for workers: more education allows workers to be paid a higher wage but doesn't make society more productive.) Bad workers, for their part, would accept a lower wage rather than pay the higher price (for them) of getting more education. And employers, seeing that the education signal really is correlated to employee productivity, would condition their wages on the signal, offering better wages to those who had invested more in the signal. This is called a signalling equilibrium.

Re:A PhD doesn't make you an expert

[Anonymous Coward]

And he was an expert. The problem was, CS wasn't what you thought it was.

Re:It took 28 years because she is a woman.

[Ironpoint]

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. Exactly. Employers want cheap, highly skilled labor. Skills will get you a job, but only a degree will get you the correct salary. Employers do not reward skills on their own. They reward the ability of a person to leave and get a job somewhere else. When changing jobs, degrees represent a third party endorsement and make it much easier to change jobs.

The idea that individual skills get rewarded is what keeps the country running on budget.

Re:It took 28 years because she is a woman.

[Frequency Domain]

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.

Re:I know what CS

[brandonY]

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++!)