POLICY & LEGAL

Rethinking Our Approach: From Punitive to Preventative Strategies

Mississippi stands at a crossroads. It has the dubious title of having the highest incarceration rate nationwide, which has a corresponding toll on its economy and workforce. The state’s sprawling prison system costs taxpayers over $400 million annually. This starkly contrasts with its struggling economy, marked by the lowest labor force participation rate in the U.S.

This situation undercuts workforce development, siphons vital economic resources, and perpetuates a cycle of missed opportunities for individuals and the broader community.

A Transformative Approach: A report released by FWD.us encourages Mississippi and state governments to pivot towards evidence-based reforms.

By doing so, Mississippi can foster a robust economy, enhance public safety, and promote a more inclusive workforce. The pathway forward involves dismantling the counterproductive reliance on prolonged incarceration, which has proven ineffective as a deterrent and detrimental to economic growth.

Key Points:

• 👮 Mississippi’s incarceration rate, the highest per capita, directly slashes the workforce, exacerbating the state’s economic challenges.
• 💰 The state’s economy suffers a $2.7 billion yearly loss due to the underemployment or unemployment of individuals with criminal records.
• 📈 Taxpayers’ substantial investment in the penal system yields scant public safety returns, questioning the efficacy of current spending patterns.
• 📉 Potential savings from reform could redirect millions to foster economic development and workforce enhancement.

🦁 Leadership Lessons »

While you may not be in a position to transform state incarceration policies, you do have an opportunity to reflect on the principles of punitive versus preventative approaches, particularly concerning our most vulnerable students.

Rethinking Our Approach: From Punitive to Preventative

Choosing between punitive and preventative strategies in higher education isn’t a choice. It’s more of a story about consequences. This means that the less preventative our methods are, the more punitive the outcomes will be. This is especially true for our most vulnerable students.

For example, the cost of failing grades, not completing a program, or paying late fees is extremely high (punitive) for many students. And to be clear, we are not suggesting removing consequences; rather, it’s like the old saying, 💰 “It’s expensive being poor.” 

In this way, the cumulative costs of these penalties have a punitive sting that doesn’t help students. Study after study suggests that it’s not a challenge that stops students but rather the cumulative weight of enduring many challenges. This gives another old saying an appropriate stage: 🐫 “The hair that broke the camel’s back.”

The cumulative weight of punitive consequences is the proverbial hair breaking our students’ backs. So the question then becomes:

Can we afford to overlook the transformative power of preventative strategies?

Preventative measures, epitomized by the adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” represent not just a shift in tactics but a complete paradigm shift in how we envision the role of higher education.

👩‍🎓 It’s about proactively identifying and addressing issues before the sting of punitive repercussions.

Take, for instance, Georgia State’s groundbreaking work with its GPS Advising system. Utilizing predictive analytics, they developed a system that monitors over 800 indicators daily to identify at-risk behaviors, resulting in dramatically improved student outcomes. This example is a testament to the efficacy of targeted preventative measures.

🤔 While we applaud Georgia State as an aspirational model, we understand it is a large, well-funded institution. And like many early warning systems, Georgia State’s preventative solution is likely too expensive and complex for smaller institutions to launch and support.

To address these challenges, we offer three considerations:

1. The Rise of No-Code Automated Solutions
2. The Pareto Principle
3. The Punitive Cost of Doing Nothing!

The Rise of No-Code Automated Solutions

The rise of No-Code Automated Solutions has simplified the creation of integrated tracking, measuring, and reporting systems, making them both cost-effective and straightforward to implement.

Many solutions, like Zapier and Make, allow resource-strapped IT departments to build MVP solutions in hours rather than months. For example, we created a no-code solution for a small community college that wanted to give faculty a quick way to support at-risk students.

At-Risk Student Support (No-Code Solution):

• Faculty: text the keyword “Retention.”
• Automated reply: What is the student’s ID#?
• Faculty: replies with student ID#
• Automation: perform student ID lookup, send a note to the Succes Team to follow up and give support to the student, add a support record to CRM
• Automation: track Success Team follow-up and remind them to close the loop with the student.
• Automation: after the loop is reported closed, send a status report text to the faculty member

With low-cost, no-code solutions, you are no longer trapped by your expensive ERP and other overly complex systems. Almost anyone with an idea is empowered to design, test, and launch a no-code solution.

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, is an often-cited Power Law. It states that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes. So, while Georgia State tracks 800 behaviors, I’d bet less than 20 behaviors account for most of the outcomes. (To be specific, according to the NEW Pareto Principle, only 8 behaviors account for 51% of the outcomes)

The point is that your institution can efficiently create and test preventative solutions by selecting the 20% that gives you 80% of the results. This frees you from the burden of trying everything and unlocks a game-changer in higher education.

The Cost of Doing Nothing!

🚀 In higher education, the pressing need to cling to known outcomes often stifles innovation and severely limits the capacity for growth. For smaller colleges, the cost is even higher. By not having bigger budgets and economies of scale, smaller institutions, by playing with the traditional playbook, find themselves boxed in without options. As a result, they falter in meeting their community’s and students’ unique needs.

This conservative approach, predominantly driven by the fear of uncertainty and failure, not only hampers innovation but also undermines the very essence of educational evolution. In a sector where the demand for personalized and impactful educational experiences is soaring, adhering strictly to what is already known can be a significant disservice to the dynamic needs of students and institutions alike.

Though not a complete strategy, the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, does allow for a much broader conversation around shifting from exhaustive comprehensiveness to focused effectiveness. Exhaustive comprehensiveness has its place, but for most situations, it’s a hideout from being accountable for making things better RIGHT NOW.

🧑‍💻 By systematically identifying and leveraging the 20% of efforts that are believed to yield 80% of the results, institutions can at least reduce the cost, timing, and resource card. It would, in my opinion, help support a responsible model for experimentation that is both manageable and impactful.

💡 This approach encourages a culture of design thinking, where the emphasis is on exploring and iterating on a set of targeted initiatives that are thought to be the most influential—(we call these the Prime Movers). Such a strategy mitigates the overwhelming burden of resources typically associated with broad-scale reforms and accelerates the pace of meaningful innovation explicitly tailored to the unique challenges faced by individual institutions.

💰 Furthermore, the cost of inaction in this dynamic educational environment extends beyond mere stagnation. It actively contributes to the erosion of the perceived value of higher education. As the traditional value propositions of higher education are increasingly questioned, the urgency to adopt a forward-thinking, experimental mindset becomes even more critical.

🚤💨 The shift towards a more agile, experimental approach in education isn’t just about avoiding the punitive consequences of inaction; it’s about proactively redesigning the value that educational institutions offer. In embracing the Pareto Principle (or others like it), higher education can transform, ensuring its relevance, effectiveness, and impact in a rapidly evolving world.

Building A Way Forward

The future of higher education hinges on our willingness to embrace change, to innovate relentlessly, and to prioritize preventative measures that enhance the well-being and success of our students.

By doing so, we can transform our institutions into more than just places of learning; we can make them catalysts for personal growth, societal improvement, and enduring success.

Let us not be content with the status quo when the tools for change are within our grasp. Let us lead with foresight, compassion, and unwavering commitment to improving our educational systems and the students we serve. Because the cost of doing nothing is just too high to bear.

🎯 Cabinet Conversation »

• How can we shift our strategic focus from punitive to preventative measures to enhance students’ success?
• What preventative solutions are we sitting on because of perceived solution cost and complexity?
• How can we experiment with no-code automated solutions to build and test an MVP (minimum viable product)?