What accounts for the keen interest in this story of the M.I.T. dean fired 28 years after faking her credentials?

I always check the most emailed list on the NYT website. It's a source of humor and dismay for me. Day after day, I see the proof that what people really want to read about in the newspaper is pets, food, travel, relationships. All week, people have been fascinated with the subject of how a dog wags its tail. A few weeks ago, a recipe for brownies topped the list for a long time, and now, the big subject is french fries (high-class, expensive french fries). Maybe it has something to do with the sort of person who responds to an article by emailing it to people or the sort of article that provokes the a person to think I've got to tell my friends.

So I'm wondering what accounts for the intense popularity of this story about an M.I.T. dean of admissions -- Marilee Jones -- who got fired 28 years after faking her credentials. She said she had three degrees when, in fact, she had none.

"I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to M.I.T. 28 years ago and did not have the courage to correct my résumé when I applied for my current job or at any time since."

Ironically, she's written a book that's all about advising students not to stress out about college admissions. It says:

“Holding integrity is sometimes very hard to do because the temptation may be to cheat or cut corners... But just remember that ‘what goes around comes around,’ meaning that life has a funny way of giving back what you put out.”

So how is this story like brownies and doggiewoggies? The personal element? Maybe there are a lot of folks out there with faked credentials or friends who look upon their success and suspect they've faked their credentials.

ADDED: Why was she discovered after all these years? How do we know she didn't choose to let the story out to get attention and set up her next book project? After 28 years on the job, she may be ready to take her retirement package and start a new life. With public shaming over something that presumably many people suffer from secret shame about, she's got the perfect entree to the Oprah show and all the other confessional, self-help media.