Beth Akers

Beth Akers is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where her work focuses on labor economics and the economics of higher education. Previously, she was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Board and a staff economist with the Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush. Akers is the author of Making College Pay: An Economist Explains How to Make a Smart Bet on College and coauthor of Game of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student Debt. Her writing and research have been featured in, among others, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Quartz, Newsweek, and The Hill. She has appeared on CNBC, ABC News, Bloomberg TV, C-SPAN, among other TV and radio networks. Akers received a B.S. in mathematics and economics from SUNY Albany and a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.