I was planning to write about the Marilee Jones scandal at MIT in an article I'm doing on credential inflation for a publication. But, then a reader of this blog at MIT asked me to post on this, now. So, here we are, deconstructing yet another chapter in the Desperate Academics follies.
The last chapter was a financial aid bigfoot at Johns Hopkins who needed a few bucks to pay for her doctorate. And so she took. This latest scandal is about Jones, the Dean of Admissions, who prettied up her resume, way back in 1979. Someone ratted her out. She's gone. But the question remains: Why?
What leads academics who seem to have it all - secure employment in a genteel environment, stimulating colleagues and enough to live on although probably in a gilded-age way - to do something that will deep-six their careers. Resentment at what businesspeople are getting in the way of salary and perks? Fear that they will be sidelined without more credentials? The fun of fooling others? The excitement of contemplating getting caught?
Perhaps it's all four. And Jones wasn't taking any chances on not being suitably credential-inflated. She only had one year of college. On her resume she created a BA, MA plus some other kind of degree from Albany Medical College.
Here and there she probably alternated between tension about discovery and utter delight that she had pulled it over on these members of what former Providence, Rhode Island mayor Buddy Cianci referred to as the "lucky sperm club." Cianci wasn't a member and that reality ate into him to the point that he self-destructed. In June he will be getting out of prison. Maybe it ate at Jones too that early in her life for whatever reason she didn't have the luxury to pile on the degrees and members of the lucky sperm club did.
So, what institution will join Johns Hopkins and MIT in the Desperate Academics follies? It has to be among the Ivys. The run of emotions which cause this sort of things is vintage Ivy drama.
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