Writing in this week’s issue of Time, Michael Kinsley ponders whether MIT did the right thing by accepting admissions dean Marilee Jones’ resignation after she admitted that she had doctored her resume. Last month, Jones resigned after confession she didn’t have the academic degrees that were listed on her resume.
Wwhat a pity, though,” Kinsley writes in Time. “M.I.T. has lost an apparently great dean at a time when you don’t read a lot about successful university administrators. And, it turns out, she is one who had a personal as well as professional understanding of the stresses of our résumé culture. It would be a useful lesson for M.I.T.’s students if the gatekeeper who gets to award the golden credential of a degree from the world’s most prestigious technical institution is someone who lacks that kind of credential. It would say, ‘Don’t let it go to your head. An M.I.T. diploma isn’t necessary. In fact, it isn’t sufficient either. There are qualities that M.I.T.’s admissions office can’t sort for and its distinguished professors can’t teach. And as you go off to face the world with your M.I.T. degree, you may or may not have them.'”
Kinsley suggests MIT give Jones an honorary degree.
We’re coming up on the season when universities hand out these things with abandon, often to people who never saw the inside of a classroom at this, or sometimes at any, university. These folks get honorary degrees because they gave the university a million or two from piles so large you can’t even see the dent. Then she could go to the university health services and get another piece of paper stating that the résumé fib was the result of stress. She’s the expert on résumé stress, after all. And then let her go back to the work she apparently does so well.
Andy writes! 
I’m catching up on some blog reading and just read Dean Dad’s take on the topic: Thoughts on Marilee Jones/
He has some interesting (although somehow opposed to Kinsley’s) points.
Karine – Thanks for sharing Dean Dad’s perspective. he makes several good points.
Speaking of catching up on blog reading, I’m woefully behind in that regard, too. Time to visit Karine’s blog!
I agree with Careaga…we are seeing more and more resume falsifications and I believe it is because of companies focusing more on the degrees than they do the quality and skills of the person. The HR professionals that are screening are overloaded and incapable of accurately assessing each professionals credentials, so they create blanket requirements for what end up being unnecessary degrees. I have been equally impressed (and unimpressed) by individuals with and without degrees. I think our society has come to a point where they are handed out generically, and no longer mean what they used to. Companies, however, have not yet caught up on this and are still using it as a means to screen highly intelligent and qualified people out. It is definately easier to critique someone on something as cut and dry as a degree than it is to actually evaluate their skills, personality and intelligence. Seems to me though, that in many positions, companies would be ahead of the game if they would train their staff to appropriately assess potential employees, rather than simply looking for the degree on the resume and tossing them into a yes or no pile. Food for thought…