MIT dean quits over fabricated credentials

The most celebrated and outspoken admissions dean in America, Marilee Jones of MIT, has resigned after acknowledging that she fabricated her academic credentials.

Jones's fall from grace is full of irony. She made it her life's mission, speaking at schools and conferences around the country, to combat the rising admissions frenzy, telling high school students and their parents that it is more important to be happy than to get into the most famous college or to have the perfect resume.

But she has now lost her bully pulpit for a decision 28 years ago to pad her resume when she applied for a position as an administrative assistant in admissions, a job that did not require a college degree.

On her resume, Massachusetts Institute of Technology officials said yesterday, Jones said she had degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Union College, and Albany Medical College, all in New York State. She does not have a degree from any of them.

Rensselaer said yesterday that Jones was a part-time student in a nondegree program from September 1974 to June 1975. Albany Medical and Union said they had no records that she had ever attended.

"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," Jones said in a statement issued through MIT. "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."

Jones did not respond to requests for an interview yesterday and asked for privacy in her statement.

Because the administrative assistant job for which she was being considered in 1979 did not require a degree, the university did not check Jones's academic credentials, said MIT chancellor Phillip L. Clay. Jones rose through the ranks and performed spectacularly, Clay said. In 1997, a committee chose Jones, who had been associate director of admissions, to become dean.

Rosalind H. Williams, MIT's former dean of students and under graduate education who oversaw the committee, said the group did not check Jones's credentials, in part because she had worked at the university for 18 years.

Lawrence S. Bacow , Tufts president, and Harvard official Evelynn Hammonds , who were MIT professors and served on the committee, said she was chosen based on her long record at MIT.

Bacow wrote in an e-mail that he is proud to have chosen her: "We all make mistakes, and she has acknowledged and paid for hers. That said, she served MIT for 28 years with distinction."

Today, MIT routinely checks "critical facts" about job candidates, including academic degrees, Clay said.

"This is a very sad personal disaster," Clay said. "Marilee came here 28 years ago and has done a great job. But integrity counts. Once we concluded there had been a deception, not withstanding her outstanding performance, a dismissal was required."

Daniel E. Hastings , dean for undergraduate education and Jones's boss, received an anonymous call last week questioning Jones's credentials, officials said.

After receiving the tip, Hastings and human resources staff spent a few days checking Jones's resume. On Monday, Hastings confronted Jones and asked for her resignation, Clay said. Hastings informed the MIT community in an e-mail yesterday.

Stuart Schmill , an admissions official, has been appointed interim director, and a search for a new dean will get underway shortly, MIT said.

Officials said Jones's dismissal will not affect the admissions process. MIT sent acceptance and rejection letters to students for this fall several weeks ago.

Various biographies for Jones give different accounts of her credentials. When she became dean, MIT said she had a bachelor of science degree and a master of science in biology from Rensselaer . In her blog on the admissions office website, Jones did not list her degrees but described herself as a scientist.

Her biography on the website of the National Association for College Admission Counseling annual conference, where she was scheduled to speak in September, said she had a doctorate but did not specify from where, and said she had studied biology and chemistry at Rensselaer and Albany Medical.

The national group deleted Jones's academic credentials yesterday from her biography on its website yesterday afternoon and said it did not know where the information came from.

Jones, 55, said in an interview with the Globe in 2004 that after growing up in Albany and attending Rensselaer , she came to MIT with her husband, now a scientist at MIT's Lincoln Lab. She said she expected to get a job in a lab but was intrigued when she saw a posting for the assistant to the admissions director. In that first job, she spent much of her time trying to figure out how to increase the pool of female applicants.

Over the years, Jones has said, she became increasingly concerned about the effect on young people of the rising competition to get into top colleges. Admissions offices and anxious parents were turning high school students into "human doings instead of human beings," she told the Globe in 2004.

"They are just doing, doing, doing, and they don't have three minutes to think about what they are doing and why they are doing it," said Jones, who later blogged about seeing the pain of her daughter's college admissions experience. "I feel sad that they don't have the kind of freedom my generation had."

Trying to send the message that students should live lives beyond their resume, she reduced the number of spaces on the MIT application for extracurricular activities from 10 to six and created such essay questions as "Tell us about something you do for the pleasure of it."

Jones has received national media attention and invitations to speak nationwide. Last year, she published a book called "Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond," with coauthor Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg , an associate pediatrics professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

"Many of us did not go to top-tier colleges and have managed to lead happy, successful lives," Jones wrote in one of her chapters. "Success, after all, comes in many forms over time."

Ginsburg declined to comment. Dr. Errol Alden , executive director and chief executive officer of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the book's publisher, said through a spokeswoman that the academy stands behind the book, which does not mention Jones's academic credentials.

Colleagues in the admissions field said they hope that others will carry on Jones's efforts to reduce the stress on students.

"I hope this doesn't undo the very good work that she's done and her message to bring this application process down to earth and out of the stratosphere of stress," said Ann McDermott, Holy Cross admissions director.

Lloyd Thacker , executive director of The Education Conservancy, an advocacy group based in Portland, Ore., has worked with Jones the last two years and planned to host a three-day leadership institute with her in Boston in June for young admissions officers.

"This is very, very sad news," said Thacker, who said yesterday he has not decided whether to cancel the event.

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@ globe.com.