Almostgotit.com

MIT blew it

May 01, 2007 By: almostgotit Category: business, lying, employment, talent, fear, jobless, exploitation, Marilee Jones

The University of Tennessee’s Lady Vols just won their 7th national championship under Coach Pat Head Summitt. Summitt is the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history (men or women). For 32 seasons she has proven herself as a winner and role model. Summitt’s coaching has created 12 Olympians, 19 Kodak All-Americans, 65 All-SEC performers, 45 international participants and 38 professional players.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Pat Head Summitt never actually graduated from UT-Martin, as it says she did on her resume — when one can even find it.

And what would the fans do now if UT forced her to resign over it?

By all accounts, MIT’s Marilee Jones is the Pat Head Summitt of college admissions. The Ivy League dean of admissions is also a celebrated writer and speaker. She is concerned about the effect on young people of the rising competition to get into top colleges, and has preached that we need to get back to supporting the “human being” rather than over-hyping the “human doing.”

Her 28-year career at MIT, apparently all spent in the admissions office, saw her rise from administrative assistant to the top position.

Nobody knew it yet, but back when she applied for that first secretarial position three decades ago, she lied about her college credentials. No one cared enough about such a lowly employee to investigate, and all of her subsequent promotions were based on her MIT experience and accomplishments alone.

And now she’s was forced to resign for doing on her resume what (according to CNN) 57% of the rest of us do, too.

In a statement issued through MIT, Jones wrote:

“I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to MIT 28 years ago and did not have the courage to correct my resume when I applied for my current job or at any time since. I am deeply sorry for this and for disappointing so many in the MIT community and beyond who supported me, believed in me, and who have given me extraordinary opportunities.”

No, she shouldn’t have done it. But she was 26 years old, bright, perceptive, and vulnerable to the glory buzzing around her, all the time, about the sanctity of high achievement. And maybe, as a mere secretary, she didn’t think it would matter very much.

But her first promotion came, and then her second. At any point she could have come clean, but she knew that as soon as she did, the ride would be over. And by every measure that mattered, she had earned that ride. There is no “Bachelor’s Degree of Admissions Deanhood.” She learned her job, just as any other person with a whatever-degree in her position would have done, by doing it. And I have no doubt that Marilee Jones was so compassionate with students in large part because of her secret.

If it turned out that Sofia Coppola wasn’t really the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, we wouldn’t take away her Academy Award. Sure, she had a hand-up in the business (as did her cousin, Nicolas Cage) but their accomplishments are their own.

Marilee Jones’ real sin is not that she lied, but that she made a fool out of MIT.

Like any university, MIT is dedicated to the preservation and advancement of its own main product: the Almighty Academic Degree. If Marilee had been honest from the beginning, sure she may have kept her job for 28 years, but she’d still be an administrative assistant. She could have played the game their way and gone back to school, but how galling to spend the money and time, not to mention endure such a drop in the academic food chain, when any other business would have promoted her for her chops alone.

Here’s my confession: I want Marilee Jones’ autograph.

I’m very grateful (thanks, dad) for my own college education. But let’s not deify credentials to the point that we’ll admit no exceptions. This forces vulnerable people to do what Marilee Jones did. And then it forces the rest of us to jettison them when they expose our own, far greater fraud.

A few weeks ago, world-famous violinist Joshua Bell played his best stuff on a 3.5 million dollar Stradivarius in the Washington D.C. subway, and 1000 people walked right by him because he wasn’t playing in a concert hall. Marilee Jones is a world-famous dean of admissions, she played her best stuff, and her accomplishments are no less impressive because she wasn’t playing with a degree.

MIT should accept Marilee Jones’ apology and make a real name for themselves by hiring her back.