Beth Akers is a feature contributor to the Sutherland podcast “Defending Ideas.” Her contributions to Sutherland include a new monthly feature for the “Defending Ideas” podcast – called “Defending Enterprise” – that will focus on educating voters about economic issues and the importance of defending free enterprise principles. In addition, Dr. Akers will provide frequent expert analysis through written contributions and participation at key Sutherland events.

Dr. Akers is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she focuses on the economics of higher education. Before joining AEI, she worked as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a visiting research scholar at the Federal Reserve Board, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush.

Dr. Akers is the author of Making College Pay: An Economist Explains How to Make a Smart Bet on Higher Education (Penguin Random House, 2021). She is also the coauthor of Game of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student Debt (Princeton University Press, 2016) and the coauthor of the chapter “Understanding Changes in the Distribution of Student Loan Debt over Time” in Student Loans and the Dynamics of Debt (Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2015).

In addition to testifying before Congress, her writing and research have been published or featured in many news publications. These include Bloomberg Opinion, the Boston Globe, Education Next, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsweek, Quartz, Time, the Hill, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and USA Today. Her broadcast appearances include ABC News, Bloomberg Television, C-SPAN, and CNBC.

Dr. Akers has a PhD in economics from Columbia University and a BS in mathematics and economics from the State University of New York at Albany.

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