This is the Part 2 of a 2-part blog. The first focused on three things that bother me. Today is a lighter blog as it is on the three things that I am happy about. The three things that I am happy about and my reasons why are below.

Alex Jones

This despicable human being made both lists. You will need to read Part 1 why he bothers me but it is the lawsuit result which makes me happy. Alex Jones and Infowars were sued by parents of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. What makes me happy here is that Alex Jones was required to pay compensatory damages of $965 million and punitive damages of $473 million. The compensatory damages are most important here as compensatory damages are designed strictly to compensate victims for actions. The court and jury recognized the harm this individual caused to the parents of these victims – and all done to make himself famous and rich. Punitive damages are punishment for improper conduct – supposedly for a deterrent. This nearly $1.5MM in damages Jones is ordered to pay provides future precedent on damages caused by any conspiracy theorist, all whom have claimed first amendment rights protect them. I suppose it doesn’t now.

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act

Google was recently sued by parents of a terrorist attack victim who died in an attack in 2015. Her parents believe that YouTube (owned by Google) failed to remove Isis videos which the YouTube algorithm even recommended them to users. The parents believe proliferating this content has made the site culpable. 

For those unaware, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act allows that providers or users of internet content cannot be treated as a publisher or speaker of that content. This effectively shields social media companies from being responsible for what is on their sites – merely because of this rule. Things change quickly and, in 1996, nobody thought that this sort of content could be proliferating or that the social media algorithms can be so powerful in terms of impacting the public both positively and negatively. This lawsuit’s goal is to get this Section either rescinded or updated to allow some level of responsibility to social media companies for content posted on their sites.

I believe in free speech until it has the power to hurt people or destroy things. These sites are damaging people in more ways than just this terrorist attack and I believe the only way to change this 100% engagement focus is to hold them accountable for information that can hurt or destroy. I am not sure of the definition of content that could hurt or destroy. However, I do not think the supreme court with an average age of over 62 is the right group to make internet recommendations. Still, I am glad to see this as real damage is being performed by these companies, whether it is harmful terrorist content or dominating the lives of our children – change does need to occur and it is time to hold these companies accountable for their impact on society.

Student Loan Forgiveness

The Biden administration has a current plan to pay more than $400 billion in student loan debt for tens of millions of borrowers. The case is being heard by the Supreme Court and it appears that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court would rule against the program. I believe this would be a good thing. Proponents of the program make the argument that these payments are needed to level the playing field between wealthy college students that do not need loans and less-wealthy students that need loans to attend college. While true, I believe a step like paying student loan debt is merely a patch to a much bigger problem. 

The Problem: Between 1963 and 2020, the average cost of tuition for undergraduate students has more than tripled and has risen 315% (from $4,336 to $13,377) over this time period (1). Room and board over this time increased 94% from $6,311 to $12,233. And it only keeps rising. Average student loan debt is now close to $28,000 per student. Costs for students have risen because of state funding cuts, expanding administration staffs and increased construction and facility costs at the universities. Much of the investment in higher education that is driving the increases are not related to hiring teaching staff, but administration staff and other growth fees. Nonacademic staff (admin and professional employees) at US colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years- vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty. From 1987-2012 – the most recent academic year for which comparable figures are available – universities and colleges collectively added 517,636 administrative and professional employees, or an average of 87 per working day, according to the analysis of federal figures, by the New England Center of Investigative Reporting (2). One can only image if these statistics were available today.

The federal government, in 1965, created the program now called the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) loan program. This program provides that the federal government fully guarantee almost all student loans, and this can include Direct Loans, Perkins Loans and Federal Family Education Loans. State governments and the federal government provide just over 40% of the total funding for postsecondary education.

Instead of treating the symptom (higher student loan debt), the rising costs of education should be addressed and the proliferation of expenses unrelated to teaching staff. If we paid down every student loan today, in ten years we would have new student loans that exceed the volume of the paydown. The federal government and states have allowed these educational institutions to monetize and grow unchecked at the expense of students when the federal government and states can control university spending. Maybe the Federal Government should force these universities to focus on their core mission of education by requiring teaching staff to be a certain percentage of total staff. The Federal Government and State Governments have allowed this spending free-for-all to occur unchecked for decades – and it is time to reel things back in to make the colleges and universities focus back on education and make education costs more attainable without the need for this large volume of student loans.

Sources:

• Cost of College Over Time: Rising Tuition Statistics.  https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-costs-over-time/
• Ranks of Nonacademic Staffs at Colleges Continues to Outpace enrollment, faculty https://hechingerreport.org/ranks-of-nonacademic-staffs-at-colleges-continues-to-outpace-enrollment-facult