<p>Mollie: I am with you on this one. I remeber when I was young and I had a good friend who loved Jane Fonda. He thuoght she was a great actress. Jane went to Hanoi. My friend then said she was a terrible actress becuase of what she did. He could not separate the skill from the act. And here we have a lot of apparently linear thinkers who also cannot admit that maybe she did a good job as admission director. What she did was wrong and she has lost here job. The thing is that MIT has seen it applications surge and I believe from what I have seen as a teacher, the number of qualifed females (and males) who want too apply becuase it is not seen as a no longer a totally "technogeek" place, increase. The woman and(and men) I know who have been accepted and gone are great. Many are more "well rounded" than those I knew in the past. MIT set out to change its perception and culture and perhaps to try to balance gender. Well it seems to have worked. Sure there are alums and others who do not like it. I was never that enthalled with the MJ approach or marketing or "we do not make mistakes stuff" nor was my son. However, I believe that MIT has for the most part gained in stature visa vis the way they are looked upon by the applying seniors and parents and has gotten a ton of kudos for their admission blog and their approach. Are thoise things now bad because she did not have a certain letter after her name? Given that things are done by committee and that the data still show MIT admits to be quite strong I do not believe" she has damaged as many people or done so much direct harm as those on the this thread would seem to believe. Image problem yes. Not doing proper background. Sure. Should she have been dismissed? Yep.</p>
<p>(By the way I do believe that Ben the Caltech crew are right in saying that MIT hs a slightly different admissions philsophy than Caltech and should not be afraid to admit it. There i no right or wrong)</p>
<p>I find it amusing also that people are so quick to criticize anything said by MIT folks stating they are setting her up to be a victim (I do not believe she is). These same people, often parents and students ,constantly play the victim, when they or their child is denied admission or they not get a perfect recommendation or anytime something does not go their way. </p>
<p>I do not always agree with Mollie but jeez do not fault her for being loyal and human. She and the others never condoned what MJ did. They are there and feel hurt and decieved. But that does not mean they should liking someone or stopp supporting something she did or implemented. I hope many of you never have a kid who does something wrong .. It might be tough for you to stop loving him/her. But you might have to to insure you are not a hypocrite.</p>
<p>Mollie
I've read your posts for years and enjoy them. The exception is when you say the MJ bashers should look at their own hypocrisies. I think people are doing that, and uniformly, they have never embellished having degrees that they do not have.</p>
<p>I would like to see MJ's initial application for her post as adm asst. I suspect she may have needed a BA or BS, but did she also need a MS? Why didn't she correct people who called her Dr? She built her career on a lie.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Maybe I'm idealistic, but I'm always slow to condemn someone's character (I do condemn many other things :P), especially with the only evidence available being the media's spin on interesting newsworthy stories.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Spin? the ONLY "media spin" I've seen was the opposite of condemning her. Are you disputing the fact that she was allowed to resign b/c she lied to MIT (and the public in all her credentials regarding her qualifications as a speaker and author) that she had multiple degrees when she had none?</p>
<p>"Why didn't she correct people who called her Dr?" </p>
<p>I don't get that either. Totally unnecessary. </p>
<p>The first job for which she applied has been described in the news as a low-level office/clerical job, one in which a college degree was not required.</p>
<p>bookworm: She got hired on a lie. She did not build her career on a lie. What if she had all the degrees and did a crappy job? She would not be there nor would she have been effective. I know people who have gotten degrees from top schools and gone nowhere because they did a poor job. It was as if they had no degree. What she did was bad A) because she lied about her background and never admitted to it and B) because she was outpoken and advised students to be honest which made it her look worse. To say that means that carrying out an MIT approved policy that started before she was the director, is now a bad policy because of her lie is farfetched. She is getting buried even more here because she was outspoken and a lot of folks need to go somewhere to vent against the MIT admissions strategy. If this happened to any of the "unknown" admin person at another school who had not changed their polices, the "outrage", as seems to be the term of the times, would not be so great.</p>
<p>Live by the sword, die by the sword: she brought this on herself, first by lying, then by being so high-profile, AND being controversial if not hypocritical in her very public advice to 17-year-olds about what they should and shouldn't do (many of her pronouncements look foolish AND hypocritical in light of her own past). </p>
<p>ANYTHING she did to change MIT's admissions from what it was before she became dean was BOUND to be 2nd-guessed in forums like this once her false past was revealed.</p>
<p>With all due respect, and I DO respect you, her career <em>was</em> built on the same lie that she got hired on. A very shaky foundation for someone who made the CHOICE to put herself so squarely in the public eye by way of the lecture circuit, book promotion, etc. To say that her career was separate and apart from this lie is to not really confront the enormity of what she did.</p>
<p>I'm not making a judgment about how well she did her job. What I wonder is if she ever made comments about applicants e.g. "Do they have the right stuff to survive & grow at MIT? When I was in college...."</p>
<p>Its just hard for me to imagine that she did not create a history for herself and made self-reference comments during those long months of committee meetings.</p>
<p>I agree that what she did was stupid and wrong and sends a bad message. My point is that I do not think here credentials that she claimed to have had were what gave her most of her credibility in her current job. It was the fact that she worked at MIT-- the MIT.And she was an energetic ambassador for the school and for the policies the school wanted. If she was not effective she would not have been promoted or been so popular--. I am not saying she did not suffer from some mental problem. I do not want to get inot all the metal problems of strong leaders(or just regular folks) and such..My experience as a manager in industry says though that the reason nobody checked anything on her is that she was doing her job well and was liked. Usually (unless it is somebdy who is after them) a person is only rechecked if they are incompetent. We did this on several people who we doubted could have really graduated based on their work. Usually they had and we wondered how. For whatever reason the school dropped the ball way back when and did not check during the Director hiring process. I am sure they are shaking their heads because they liked her and felt she was competent. They screwed up and so did she. However she still was probly being evaluated positively on annual reviews which goes to show she did not need degrees to do the job well. But we all know that for many jobs a degree is just a ticket anyway.</p>
<p>bookworm: I would not assume she could not be objective on evaluations of apps because of what she did.</p>
<p>
[quote]
She got hired on a lie. She did not build her career on a lie.
[/quote]
We don't know that. We know that she lied about her degrees; we don't know what else she may have lied about along the way. A very common on-the-job lie is to take credit for someone else's work; a fairly inept person can do very well in a management position by delegating tasks to subordinates, and then taking credit for the results. I am not saying that MJ did or did not do that -- I don't know, I wasn't there. It's just that my life experience teaches me that if someone will lie about one thing, they will lie about another. Some people are simply prone to twisting the truth and exaggerating their own role and accomplishment. </p>
<p>I don't agree with the people here who have bashed her point of view, MIT admissions standards, or the qualifications of students admitted under MJ's tenure. </p>
<p>However, I don't agree with those who make excuses for her misrepresentations, either. I view this as a violation of trust that was continuous, renewed every time she cashed a paycheck from MIT. She was there on false pretenses -- which simply was not fair to her employer and not fair to the 65 other candidates for the job when she applied.</p>
<p>
[quote]
She is getting buried even more here because she was outspoken and a lot of folks need to go somewhere to vent against the MIT admissions strategy.
[/quote]
oldolddad, she's getting buried because she is a narcisistic liar. I have always admired the MIT grads I've known. I have no kids interested in applying & have never had a reason to vent against the school. I just can't abide a lying hypocrite like Jones. What hubris. Criticizing students for embelishing credentials, lecturing all who would listen about honesty & integrity, standing in judgment of hard working kids submitting applications in good faith --- all the while having no degrees whatsoever. And calling attention to herself at every step. Writing a book! And then offering a weak apology that didn;t realy own up to her lies. It sure sounds like a deep rooted mental problem. </p>
<p>Any criticism of the evolution in the MIT admissions philosophy is an entirely seperate issue. As is the opinion on whether the job is an easy one, or whether it should even require college degrees.</p>
<p>"My point is that I do not think her credentials that she claimed to have had were what gave her most of her credibility in her current job."</p>
<p>Hmm . . . I would disagree with that. People tend to listen more closely when one has a PhD behind his/her name. I also suspect that she was the only PhD in admissions (not to mention being the Dean, of course). I do think that simply having the PhD automatically (often) gives people instant credibility. The fact that she called herself a "trained PhD scientist" (and she had one of the top administrative jobs at MIT), also helped with her credibility in speaking engagements and in getting her book published. Those fabricated credentials gave her a lot of credibility, on the job, and away from it. I would expect the fabricated PhD might have afforded her a higher salary as well.</p>
<p>Perhaps, since the fact that she didn't need 3 degrees to do that job as well as it seems she did (or as everyone thinks she did), the next hire should simply be a highly charismatic, "energetic" high school graduate. Why not?</p>
<p>"She was there on false pretenses -- which simply was not fair to her employer and not fair to the 65 other candidates for the job when she applied."</p>
<p>Yep and that is also where MIT failed to do their homework at least twice..</p>
<p>sticker shock: I gues I am just jaded. I see all sorts of people who are good parents who tell their kids what they should and should not do as teenagers or in college while they themselves a were far from perfect. They are pretty good parents even though we might call them hypocrits.</p>
<p>She is gone and who knows what will happen but I bet the background checks are tightened up for future candidates.</p>
<p>Jack: I was never that impressed by a lot of alphabet soup behind folks names. In some fields people like to flaunt it(kind of like people who like to point out where they went to school). In many cases the folks who are most impressive are the ones who never let on about their degrees. I just never cared about where a Dean of Admissions went to school or what degrees they had, especially 28 years out. I can't believe it would have that much bearing on her job today. My experience is that nobody really cares about where you went to school after you have been hired. The perfomance matters. ---Again I am not condoning what she or the school did. Kind of wierd.</p>
Where, where, did you get the idea that recent classes at MIT invented social interaction, or diverse interests? Next thing you know you'll tell us your parents never had sex.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>lol, I didn't mean to insinuate that diversity and varied interests is something exclusive to this generation, I just mean that they make up a very important part of the life of any student (even a tech student) and should not be neglected in that regard. I just went to a jazz concert put on by a group of friends tonight and it was great and the fact that we do have these students with these talents and these interests roaming the halls of MIT (and finding each other) is another testament to the job the admissions office is doing. So it's important to get the word out there. I didn't apply to Caltech because I thought its students were too focused. Is this necessarily the case?? Who the heck knows! But if it is NOT the case they did not do a good job convincing me of it. </p>
<p>While I understand the argument that MIT should admit the best and the brightest scientists and mathematicians, it can choose among the best and the brightest, can't it? It can choose those who will build the healthiest and most supportive class.</p>
<p>"In many cases the folks who are most impressive are the ones who never let on about their degrees."</p>
<p>Oh, I agree completely. ^ I would add that the most impressive people I've met through the years are also the ones who are quite accomplished, but who never feel the need to talk about those accomplishments. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, when that PhD was constantly out there for people to see, and everybody started referring to her (at some point) as "Dr," it absolutely did add credibility to everything she did or said. To believe otherwise is naive. </p>
<p>To refer to herself (or to allow others to refer to her) as a "PhD trained scientist" put her on the same level as the MIT faculty. Don't think for a minute that adding PhD to the end of her name did not give her credibility-- with other administrators, with faculty, with parents, with students, with book publishers . . . She certainly knew that.</p>
<p>Also, having worked in university settings all my life, they are extremely hierarchical places. Those degrees matter-- even among administrators-- moreso, perhaps, than in other settings.</p>
<p>(I wasn't talking about her performance on the job. I know nothing about that. I was merely taking issue with your earlier statement about credibility.)</p>
<p>The moralistic discussion of lying is tedious, and when extended to hundreds of postings, verges on spam. </p>
<p>I personally find it hilarious and much deserved that elite university admissions, which all but demands lying by asking applicants to posture about accomplishments (at an age when most have none) and write narcissistic essays, has just been pranked in a way few would have thought possible two weeks ago. Rockin' Marilee Jones has for 28 years put a finger in the eye of the credentials business from within one of its centers.</p>
<p>The tragic aspect is that it happened at MIT, which is one of the most open, earnest and idealistic environments in all of academia. IHTFP notwithstanding, MIT completely lacks the cynicism of the school down the street. Its admissions are also the second-most meritocratic and straightforward among private universities in the US, despite the Jones effect. Harvard would have been an even more spectacular and infinitely more deserving target for this particular work of performance art.</p>
<p>With that said, here is another remark (not a moral judgement) about Jones' lying:</p>
<p>
[quote]
She got hired on a lie. She did not build her career on a lie.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The lie was critical to, and changed the course of, her daily on-the-job activities. Had she somehow been hired for the same positions but with full disclosure that she was no scientist, there would have been more supervision, additional people involved in (or Jones excluded from) analyses of admissions data and judgements derived from those, etc.</p>
<p>The positive evaluation of Jones work by her superiors was based very largely on the assumption that she was competent to do the work to begin with. Statements like "the admissions statistics show X, Y, and Z this year" are given different weight if made by people who can make informed judgements rather than winging it.</p>
<p>
[quote]
ANYTHING she did to change MIT's admissions from what it was before she became dean was BOUND to be 2nd-guessed in forums like this once her false past was revealed.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, that might lead to a pointed question: What did Marilee Jones exactly do to change the world of admissions at MIT during her 10 years reign? How much did MIT **really **change in the ten years that followed the 24 years of Peter H. Richardson and Michael C. Behnke? </p>
<p>While it is undeniable that the position of Dean of Admissions at a world known school such as MIT brings great recognition and status, one has to wonder how much goes to the position and how much goes to the individual. When compared to Deans who brought substantial changes to their schools and left a tangible imprint, it does seem that, in the case of Marilee Jones, there is a great imbalance between the "reported" credits and her measurable accomplishments - about as large as the irreconcilable chasm between her misleading and hypocritical declarations and her positive actions.</p>
<p>For the record, she never claimed she had a PhD. The only time it was accidentally attributed to her, my understanding was she called to correct it. Yeah yeah, I know, "what an honest lady", you'll sneer. I'm only saying this so the discussion doesn't reach the levels of "fabrication", if you must.</p>
<p>Also, the media is not aware of any degrees, it does not mean that she necessarily has none. Even if she did I wouldn't expect now to be the time for her to speak up about it.</p>
<p>Just some things. Not telling you what to think or anything.</p>