Hacker News Reader

Comment by trun | Hacker News Reader

First of all, this article is three years old. Second of all, Marilee Jones blatantly lied about her credentials for 28 years. Yes, she did a fantastic job while she was at MIT, but that doesn't change the fact that she lied. This is not an issue of credentialism, it's an issue of trust and integrity. As far as I'm concerned, what she did is on par with the kid from Harvard who was recently charged with fabricating his life story...

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/by_gl...

View on HN

It is an issue of trust...trust in college credentials. If you ask me, overpriced colleges and forcing degrees on the art, history, etc. majors of the world is a far greater swindle and far more damaging on the economy.

Colleges have conditioned the public to think if there are two similar people, the one with the degree is much better than the one without. Degree requirements on many jobs have increased from bachelors, to masters and even PhDs over the years.

People like Marilee put these claims in doubt and show that degrees are a poor predictor of capability; something that employers over-rely on these days.

Everyone makes mistakes - this was certainly worse than some but really, I don't see how she would ever have had an opportunity to honestly correct the mistake after getting hired without this happening, so she had little choice but to live with it. It does raise the issue of why she had to fake her credentials - or even feel pressured to - to be considered for the job if she was a good candidate without them.

She could have honestly corrected her "mistake" by saying "I don't have a degree; I lied on my resume."

Many organizations have a policy that you can and will be terminated at any time for lying on your application. If she admitted it, bam.

Which has precisely Zip to do with being honest. Honesty isn't a sliding scale, where you say one thing if its good for you, and another if it harms you.

How did she perform at her job for 28 years? If OK, that performance is a far better guide to her quality than any bits of paper she may or may not have. If not OK, they should have sacked her.

Once an employee has been working at an employer for a reasonable length of time (certainly a lot less than 28 years), the employer has adequate knowledge of how that employee performs at their job; and if the employee isn't up to it, they have the opportunity to end the employment. Therefore I think that after a certain interval (say a year or 2), an employer should not be able to use the accuracy or otherwise of an employee's CV to sack them.

How did she perform at her job for 28 years?

Her actual performance was at times quite controversial. I will defer to the MIT students and alumni here (remember, some of those will have been admitted when she was in charge of admission at MIT) to comment on what they think the pros and cons of her legacy are.

I was at MIT during her reign as dean of admissions (I dropped out about a year or so into it). She was actually rather offensive, claiming that the generation after me cared more about fitting in than academics, and she did a pretty good job of skewering the extracurricular activities which were one of the major defining parts of MIT (at least for undergraduates).

Actually, I have nothing good to say about MIT's administration above the individual professors and departments -- they spent huge amounts of money on pointless things, and mainly consisted of professional administrators (educated at e.g. BU) vs. alumni. During my time at MIT they destroyed the FSILG system (student-managed small housing groups) due to one fucknozzle drinking himself to death next door to my residence.

I haven't kept up with MIT since around 2000, but it was definitely on a downward trend from 1996-1999, surviving mainly on past reputation.

Yeah, I chose MIT because I wanted to get my ass kicked, which didn't happen so much. It's still possible, but it seems that they've been watering down everything. They banned triple majoring, and I think they've even stopped granting dual degrees now.

The administration has always seemed pathologically risk-averse, and mostly come from the wrong sort of background to run the type of school MIT should be.

It's still not a bad place, but I think I could put together a far superior program, attached to another research university (to have access to grad students), to educate undergrads for $15-20k/yr (vs. the $60k/yr MIT claims to be spending). Take risks!

I think something like KAUST (in Saudi) could end up being what MIT should be -- or Olin (the free school which has lots of MIT SM/PhD instructors).

If I had kids, I'd probably push toward an undergrad-focused school like Reed for pure science education, or Stanford or UC Berkeley for someone who wanted to be an engineer, just to have access to the silicon valley ecosystem. I think there is a strong case for "take 1-2 years between HS and college to work", too.

Yeah, I agree, I still enjoyed it, met a lot of great people, and (I think) got a good education. Just meant to agree that the administration seems to be almost more of a hinderance than a help to those things.

Olin isn't free anymore.

http://olin.edu/admission/costs.asp

I think she did an OK job, except for her recent campaign to admit more of the "well-rounded" type that most Ivies also go for. I think that somewhat diminished what makes MIT special.

I think it may be part of the reason that so many of my classmates went into finance and consulting after graduating. Many seemed to be more in love with the name than with tech itself.

This isn't universally true, of course, and much of it is based on hearsay, since I wasn't there to observe other time periods.

Having such a 'statute of limitations' on resume-lies would encourage a lot more lying, by everyone who thinks they can do a good job for the 'grace period' without their deception being discovered.

This woman was the Dean of Admissions. To forgive her deception would have made it hard to object in principle to anyone lying on their MIT college application.

Yeah, universities certainly never overstate the value of a degree.

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com