Beth Akers began her freshman year at Ithaca College in upstate New York. But she had qualms about the debt she would take on at that private school, so she transferred to a less-expensive public school: the University at Albany-the State University of New York, or SUNY.
“And the rest, as they say, was history,” Akers said in an email. “I was much more comfortable with the financial tradeoff.”
Akers is an expert in labor economics and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank in Washington. She’s a critical voice on the student debt crisis and advocates for cuts in college tuition and costs, saying colleges’ federal funding should be tied to job prospects — and pay — of graduates.
