I see the irony as being the fact that our greatest scientific institution of higher learning, with some of the most rigorous admission standards in the world, hired a Dean of Admissions who claimed to be a scientist and have degrees from three other prestigious institutions, when in fact she had none. Not even one from a local community college. So this Dean not only preached her mantra of less pressure in admissions, she lived it by eliminating from her life the pressure of even showing up for enough classes to get an associate degree.
I’m sure the only reason she put fake stuff on her resume is that, no matter how well-qualified she may have been for her initial job, she wouldn’t have even gotten and interview, much less hired, if her resume didn’t carry the credential of a college degree. All our institutions — academic, government, private business — should focus on people’s real ability, skills, and willingness to do a job, rather than paper credentials. I’m afraid the main reason this is hardly ever the case anymore, is the insane body of law that has built up to ban “discrimination”. Only specific credentials can reliably be used to defend against discrimination suits, e.g. “We didn’t hire applicant A over applicant B because applicant A was white, but because applicant A had a master’s degree and applicant B only had a bachelor’s degree.” Explaining that a less/non-degreed applicant just seemed more energetic and more enthusiastic about the specifics of the job, is a ticket to losing in court and facing a huge damage award.
I'm sure the only reason she faked her stuff was that she had absolutely no qualifications and would have been shown the door if she had told the truth. Though I have to hand it to her, she deserves a Masters in hutzpa and a PhD as a fabulist.
She had enough qulaifications to last 28 years there, and keep getting promoted until she was at a level where she was deciding what students got in. I imagine it would have been discovered a long time ago, if she did have the necessary qualifications to perform the various jobs she’s held there. My point is that our society has become obsessed with “credentials”, in many cases dumping actual qualifications out of the selection process completely. The federal and most state governments are among the most egregious examples of this. Nearly all positions require one or more “degrees”, but there are tens of thousands of lazy and/or incompetent government workers who have the requisite degrees but lack the qualifications. And many applicants for the same jobs who DID have the qualifications were turned away for lack of the requisite degrees. Public school teachers are probably the most destructive example of this process. State governments, in collusion with unions, have passed laws and regulations requiring degrees in “education” or at least “teaching certification”. Acquiring either involves spending huge amounts of time doing truly idiotic things and listening to truly idiotic lectures, so many brilliant people who would make excellent teachers are excluded from jobs teaching in public schools, while all sorts of barely literate people get these jobs on the basis of their “credentials”. I’d have a lot of trouble getting worked up about it, if some well-educated, highly motivated person got a public school teaching job by falsely claiming to have a degree from one of our nation’s teacher’s colleges, and proceeded to move up the ranks and make a real positive difference in the schools.