MIT Dean of Admissions Resigns in Lying Scandal 351
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?"
Additional Reporting (Score:2, Informative)
Why it took so long (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This means one of two things... (Score:5, Informative)
Or: University degrees aren't worth very much.
Re:It took 28 years because she is a woman. (Score:4, Informative)
You don't have to use the term racist to describe anyone who is prejudiced. There is already a word [wikipedia.org] that encompasses that.
Re:It took 28 years because she is a woman. (Score:5, Informative)
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:Hypocrisy (Score:2, Informative)
Furthermore, the admissions office handles admission of high school students to the undergraduate program. Department chairs (and faculty in general) have almost no role in this process. Admissions folders are read and evaluated by admissions officers within this office (who are not part of the faculty). The primary role of the dean of admissions is to maintain the quality, integrity, and consistency of these evaluations. (This is in contrast to admission to graduate programs, in which individual departments and faculty play a very large part by reading and rating each application.)
Put simply, the job of the admissions office at a school like MIT is to sort through a pool of near-perfect, almost identical-looking applications to select the small percentage who they believe will have the best chance at success at MIT while ensuring diversity among geographic, ethnic, economic and other factors.
Why would you trust this process to an indivudal who had no idea what it was like to even go to college?