<p>Higherlead you are asking questions that are theoretical that I am not even about to address because they are theoretical, and I do not have any direct experience in the scenarios you posit. I will say however that I do often tell "benign" lies about what I do for a living - for example, I was on travel last week, and on night late, stopped at the bar in the restaurant connected to my hotel to order dinner to go. I wanted to take it back to my room, in order to eat while I worked and answered email. The bartender asked "what do you do for a living"...and, I'm asked this a lot. I simply lie, or evade. I'll say I'm a salesperson or something really, really boring that does not invite further discussion. I'm no Valerie Plame but I am not about to get into what I do for a living and I do not want to draw attention to myself. Is that wrong? No, not in my opinion. The bartender has no need to know, he is not harmed by not knowing and he realizes no loss by not knowing and he cannot profit if he does know. And I don't want to offend him by saying "it's none of your business" or "I do not wish to discuss that with you", lest he go back in the kitchen and tell the chef to spit in my food. So that is a very benign lie that harms no one and may even protect me from those who are inappropriately curious. </p>
<p>Re the bartender, was my "deception" easily exposed? Of course it was, I paid for my food with my credit card, and, if he wanted to, he could google me, and then he would know I am no salesperson. But the likelihood he would do so was small, or, by the time he found his way to a computer, I would be long gone, so, no harm done.</p>
<p>Re the insurance company, there is a lot of angst over the use of credit reporting information being used in risk scoring. The insurance lobby will argue that persons who are in debt or behind in their bills are under a greater degree of stress than persons who have plenty of money and pay their bills on time, therefore, persons with less than stellar credit reports cause more accidents as a result of this stress, therefore, they are entitled to charge higher rates in these cases. They can produce any number of very legitimate actuarial studies that support their position. There is an equally legitimate, opposing viewpoint (though a far weaker lobby and therefore unlikely to ever achieve any legislative action) that says that the use of credit reporting for insurance risk scoring unfairly targets minorities, etc. But this doesn't mean the solution is for me to lie. My options are (1) lobby my legislators to change the regs; (2) decide it isn't worth my time to do #1, and instead spend that same amount of time earning more money in order to mitigate the higher insurance premium, and/or go get the college degree so that whatever my insurance company does will not matter - a parallel choice that Marilee also had, for 28 years, and did not execute. </p>
<p>Is what Marilee did "heinous"? Yes, in that the various avenues to earn advanced degrees legitimately appear to have been well within her reach. MIT was right to require her to resign and right to publicize it, and, if they should decide to take legal action or of criminal charges come about (which I think is appropriate considering that her compensation was based on false information, which constitutes fraud), I think MIT would be entirely within their rights. MIT is an outstanding institution and they will have many choices for admission director candidates who have legitimate degrees that have actually been earned, and there is no reason for them to continue to employ or for that matter even tolerate a person who is so chronically dishonest.</p>