Don Firth's friend...

For example, an acquaintance of mine falsified her resumé to get a job that she both wanted and needed. Had she not, she wouldn't have got the job. It turned out that she was more than competent, her employer was very pleased with her work, and the matter never came up. In this case, does the end justify the means?

...was in exactly the same position as the MIT dean; she just never got questioned and never got caught. I think there ought to be a "statute of limitations" on this sort of thing ~ 28 years of exemplary service ought to count for something. Well, I hope they didn't take her retirement benefits away; after 28 years on a job requiring postgraduate education (i.e. a job not open to 18-year-olds, with or without falsified resumes), she's old enough, or nearly so, to start taking it easy, even though she may well have wished to continue a few years longer.

In hindsight, her field of special expertise ~ reducing the anxiety around college admissions ~ would seem to have a solid real-life basis in her own psyche.

This case reminds me of the football coach hired away from Georgia Tech by Notre Dame a few years ago. The high degree of media scrutiny directed upon any candidate for this ultra-conspicuous posision uncovered something that had been easily kept secret until then, through several other fairly high-profile head coaching jobs. He had lied on his resume about getting a master's degree in education.

Sorry, I fail to remember his name. First name is George, and surname is actually Irish (which would have been fitting), not Norwegian like Rockne or Armenian like Parseghian.

Of course, the college treaching credential is completely irrelevant to qualification as head coach of a big-time US university football program. But he was exposed as dishonest, and so will probably never work in college football again. But I'm pretty sure he's making a comfortable living as a pro football assistant coach. The NFL is only interested in his coaching talent.

PS ~ Very interesting observations from Joe Offer. I've seen the same thing myself, but never put it all together quite so clearly. There are really so many cases where folks in positions where truth-telling matters the most just can't seem to resist the temptation to exaggerate, if not outright lie.