Credentials that really count

Editorials
For parents of high school students fixated on getting into an elite college, Marilee Jones was the lifter of burdens and bestower of hope.

The director of MIT - hardly a bastion of slouchers - told students and parents they could give up the self-flagellation of trying to be cookie-cutter perfect and still get into high-quality institutions. She clucked, like a reassuring aunt, at admissions departments that pressured anxiety-ridden adolescents to deliver the "whole package" of grades, clubs and volunteering. "Adults in their world are holding them up to such a high standard," she warned, "that there's no room to fail."

But her reassurance that students could be successful without selling their identity or their soul took a hit last week when she resigned from her position of 28 years, admitting she had falsified her own resume.

An MIT official said the university could not abide such behavior in a department that sometimes rescinds acceptance of students for lying on their own applications.

The irony was painful. Jones is the co-author of a well-received book, "Less Stress, More Success," that warns parents against trying to raise perfect children and challenges adults to mitigate undue pressure on students to perform.

Meanwhile, Jones was living a lie she couldn't get away from. On the MIT Web site, she said she misrepresented her educational credentials when she started at the school as an administrative assistant, then "did not have the courage to correct my resume" when she applied for her current job.

But, degrees or not, Jones was seen as extraordinarily competent and repeatedly promoted for it. Her book sold well in no small part because it was down-to-earth and sensible, filled with an intimate understanding of admission pressures but leveled by a reassurance that genuine passion, creativity and curiosity were worth more than perfect GPAs.

College students may well question the wisdom of Jones' advice to lighten up over college resumes when she was driven to pad her own.

And, conversely, some free thinkers may suggest that the "system" - not Jones - was the one who had it wrong.

Do educational credentials carry undue weight, they may well ask, when people can be highly successful without them, but may never have a shot at top jobs? Suspending judgment on Jones' deception, isn't it just as wrong that someone so talented and bright would never have gotten her foot in the door without a cookie-cutter list of diplomas?

Those questions may be debated, but one fact remains irrefutable: The one credential that has to be on every resume is truthfulness.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070430/EDIT01/704300332/1090

Do you study hard for grade? or you want to make a difference.

Sometimes it is sick to see people memorizing the test answers without their critical thinking.

To me, I learn because I am motivated to acquire the new knowledge and dare to break the rule.