Falsified Resume Forces Resignation of MIT Dean

[Evo]

You misunderstand, Evo - if Barry Bonds is eventually proven to have used steroids, his records get erased. Those balls still flew over the fence, but since they only did that because of a cheat, it is as if they never did. It is the same here:

The award she got in 1997 was "MIT Excellence Award for Leading Change." The change that she led was the fraud she committed! Lowering standards - that was her pet cause and how she cheated. It is exactly the same as getting off the subway to win the Boston Marathon.

I don't see it the way you see it. If an athlete's performance was enhanced by drugs, then I agree it was not really his performance. However, lying on a resume and how well you perform do not go hand in hand. It appears no one denies that she was excellent in her job. I didn't say that she should go unpunished, I was disagreeing with cronxeh's tirade that only people with degrees can be competant. That's hogwash.

 

[Evo]

Let me put it another way:

If she hadn't been a fraud, would she have made lowering expectations as her pet cause? I'm not a pshrink, so I don't know which was the cause and which the effect, but I have to think they are two parts of the same problem in her mind.

So...if she hadn't been a champion for change, would she have gotten the job? The awards? Being a champion for change in standards is what likely got her the job and what definitely got her at least one of the awards. And being a champion for change is her fraud.

It is actually a little worse than I had thought yesterday. You can lie on an application and still be the best at it (whether sports or a job). But her performance itself was based on the same lie that got her the job.

I would agree that she championed the cause in part due to her feelings about what she had done. It would be interesting to find out why she lied since I read that the job she originally was hired for at MIT did not require the degrees she claimed to have.

To me it's like finding out that Mother Teresa wasn't really a nun, it wouldn't make her actions any less real or charitable. That's just my point of view.

 

[Art]

Everyone here agrees lying on one's CV is wrong but in this case the lies only got Marilee on the first rung of the ladder. Her subsequent promotions were on the basis of how she performed her job and how she presented her ideas during interview. In the article below president Charles M. Vest details why she was appointed dean of admissions and not once does he refer to her academic qualifications;

"Marilee Jones, who has been interim director of admissions since May 1, has been named Dean of Admissions, effective January 1, 1998. Ms. Jones will direct a staff of 33.

MIT will be well served by Marilee Jones's leadership in this important position," said President Charles M. Vest. "MIT's future will be defined in large measure by the quality and interests of the students who join us. Excellence in admissions is essential to our future. Marilee has the creativity, the strategic view and the ability to implement the faculty's policies and achieve their goals for our classes."

Ms. Jones' appointment was announced by Rosalind H. Williams, dean of students and undergraduate education.

"The Dean of Admissions is a key position at MIT. Marilee Jones has been chosen for this position after a long, sometimes arduous and extremely thorough national search by a distinguished and hard-working search committee," said Dean Williams.

"While managing the office day to day, Marilee keeps the big picture in mind -- she is constantly thinking about where MIT should be 10 years from now and how we can attract top-flight undergraduates. She has worked hard at developing her staff and is well known as a fine supervisor who emphasizes team-building. On the road, she can reach audiences as few others can, serving as a superb spokesperson for MIT from coast to coast. I am delighted she will be part of the leadership team of the Dean's Office," Dean Williams said.

It seems that there is an element of academic snobbery in some of the criticisms of this woman as if some people refuse to admit that a non-qualified person could possibly do a job as well as, never mind better than, someone with an academic background. I don't know why such an attitude exists?? I believe credit should be given where credit is due. By all accounts the woman did a darn good job. Okay, fault her for lying but to try to argue that she must have done a crap job because she didn't have a degree is a ridiculous argument and maybe says more about the brittle confidence of people who hold this view who perhaps see their qualifications as the measure of their worth and so hold these in higher regard than a proven record of high achievements such as the career of the woman in question.

 

[Thrice]

What the statistics say is pretty straightforward: Women are qualified to attend MIT at a rate two and a half times higher than men...assuming equal admissions standards, of course.

What's the actual truth? Well personally, I believe in equality of the sexes, but I guess I don't know for sure that women aren't far superior than men intellectually...

At the risk of turning this into an Affirmative Action debate, this very issue has been in court a number of times and pretty much always gets decided the same way. It takes a lot of creativity with admissions criteria to get around the Constitutional requirement for equality and artificially boost a desirable minority.

There's a difference between her not doing her job in a satisfactory manner & you disagreeing with her policies.

 

[Art]

I don't see it the way you see it. If an athlete's performance was enhanced by drugs, then I agree it was not really his performance. However, lying on a resume and how well you perform do not go hand in hand. It appears no one denies that she was excellent in her job. I didn't say that she should go unpunished, I was disagreeing with cronxeh's tirade that only people with degrees can be competant. That's hogwash.

I agree and to take Russ' analogy of the athlete, I see it more like an athlete lying to his team boss saying he has been training 5 days a week in order to get picked for the track team whereas in fact he did not train at all but still having been picked went out and won the race.

According to this article she was told to devise a plan to increase the number of females and so it wasn't her personal crusade driven by her own incompetencies as has been suggested

Also note the entry standard increased under her tenure which somewhat spoils the theory that she leaned towards people like herself - female and lacking in formal qualificatons

Ms. Jones joined the Admissions Office in 1979. Among other duties, she was charged with devising a plan to increase the number of female undergraduates. Thirty-nine percent of the undergraduate student body is now female, compared to 17 percent when she joined the office.

Between 1985 and 1996, the number of women and minorities increased dramatically, with women comprising 42 percent of the last entering class (compared to 28 percent in 1985) and minorities comprising 17.5 percent (compared to 8.5 percent).

In 1996, MIT received 8,022 applications -- 40 percent more than in 1985 -- with females rising by 94 percent from 1,168 to 2,270, and minorities by 73 percent, from 364 to 631. The mean SAT scores for admitted students were 723 verbal/760 math, compared to 718/758 five years ago. Forty-two percent of this year's freshmen were high school class valedictorians, vs. 39 percent five years ago.

"Our overall yield of 57 percent (the proportion of those admitted who choose to enroll) puts us in the top five for top private colleges and universities in America, unparalleled for an institute of technology," said Ms. Jones.

 

[Anttech]

I don't see it the way you see it. If an athlete's performance was enhanced by drugs, then I agree it was not really his performance. However, lying on a resume and how well you perform do not go hand in hand. It appears no one denies that she was excellent in her job. I didn't say that she should go unpunished, I was disagreeing with cronxeh's tirade that only people with degrees can be competant. That's hogwash.

Not to mention very elitist

 

[morphism]

Yeah, MIT got the most outstanding Dean of Admissions in the school's history.

In your opinion! Many people didn't approve of her non-standard approach to admissions.

Also, she was prolonging her "ancient" lie each and every time she used her credentials, and that includes every time she was called "Dr. Jones." It's completely outrageous that she was the one to determine who is qualified for admission, when she herself failed to complete the task of obtaining an undergraduate degree! It's also equally outrageous that she used to preach about honesty and how getting into a good school wasn't everything.

"We have been criticized this year for the honesty of the blogs, for trying to create more transparency in the admissions process. [...] I'm proud to represent a place where truth is the whole point, messy or not. [...] And proud that MIT Admissions is a community of wonderful people who love you guys, who really think about you and care so much that we want to tell you the truth no matter what."
- Marilee Jones, in http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_process_application_reading_committee_and_decisions/sending_you_my_best.shtml .