Five Best Ideas of the Day

1. Is the rise of Isis in Iraq and Syria a short term policy defeat for the U.S. or the end of our ability to influence world events?

By Owen Bennett-Jones in the London Review of Books

2. To provide indigenous communities with a surprising injection of health and social life, build a pool.

By Phillipa Nicole Barr and Melanie Garrick at the Guardian

3. “Testing in” to a bachelor’s degree could make new leaders out of qualified but uncredentialed workers.

By Matt Krupnick in the Hechinger Report

4. Unbanked or credit-invisible African Americans are locked out of employment opportunities, home ownership and more.

By Edward Wyckoff Williams in The Root

5. A tech industry rush to recruit interns as young as high school age begs the question: Is there a labor shortage, or isn’t there?

By Sarah Frier in Bloomberg News

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C.