--- --- # Five Best Ideas of the Day: March 20 by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Mar 20, 2015 4:01 PM UTC by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Mar 20, 2015 4:01 PM UTC **1\.** [**The prison system is costly and rarely rehabilitates prisoners. Imagine a better way to transition inmates to freedom.**](http://www.vox.com/2015/3/18/8226957/prison-reform-graduated-reentry) By Mark A.R. Kleiman, Angela Hawken, & Ross Halperin in Vox **2\.** [**Lawmakers should listen to the budget hawks, not the defense hawks.**](http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/03/lawmakers-should-listen-budget-hawks-not-defense-hawks/108012/?oref=defenseone%5Ftoday%5Fnl) By Robert Gard and Angela Canterbury in Defense One **3\.** [**For teenage girls, it’s possible to shift “attention bias” — literally focusing them on happy faces instead of sad ones — and fight the risk of depression.**](http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/can-we-train-teenage-girls-to-see-less-darkness-in-the-world) By Jennifer Kahn in Pacific Standard **4\.** [**The next generation of American workers isn’t prepared to take over the jobs of departing baby boomers. The cost of this failure will be enormous.**](http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2015/changingfaceoftheheartland) By Jennifer Bradley in the Brookings Essay **5\.** [**As a four-year college education slips further out of reach, community college has some important lessons to teach us.**](http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article15296591.html) By Josh Wyner in the Miami Herald  [_The Aspen Institute_](http://www.aspeninstitute.org/) _is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C._ Five Best Ideas of the Day: March 20 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3752312/five-best-ideas-of-the-day-march-20/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3752312/five-best-ideas-of-the-day-march-20/"},"headline":"Five Best Ideas of the Day: March 20","datePublished":"2015-03-20T16:01:58.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:04:57.931Z","description":"Reimagining prison, listening to budget hawks on defense spending, fighting the jobs gap, the lessons of community college and more.","url":"https://time.com/3752312/five-best-ideas-of-the-day-march-20/","keywords":["Innovation","Depression","Education","College","Workers","Pentagon","Budget","reform","Spending","Prison","Minnesota","training"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"The Aspen Institute","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/innovation/","name":"Innovation"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3752312/five-best-ideas-of-the-day-march-20/","name":"Five Best Ideas of the Day: March 20"}}]}] ```