Making College Pay by Beth Akers

MAKING COLLEGE PAY by Beth Akers is a recently released text in which “An Economist Explains How to Make a Smart Bet on Higher Education.” Akers who has co-authored Game of Loans is currently a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Early in the text, she notes that “the extra earnings afforded by a college degree tend to far outweigh the up-front cost.” However, she goes on to argue that “our culture tends to discourage aspiring students from being appropriately critical consumers when shopping for colleges.” Akers focuses on the idea that using an economic lens (weighing potential benefits versus costs) will help students and their families make better financial decisions involving both where to go and how to pay for college. She includes graphs and charts, especially quoting work done at The Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. That data, with a range of projected earnings by major, will be especially helpful to many of our business and consumer classes who regularly are tasked with assuming they have completed undergraduate school and then establishing a budget and expenses outline. Those concepts (rent, groceries, or cell phones cost how much?) are truly new to many of them. Akers includes an entire chapter titled “Loans: the Smart Way to Pay” which may also offer some ideas new to students and parents, particularly with her comments about how working part-time while enrolled might set students back financially and/or why it’s often best to borrow, even if the need is not there. An Appendix with useful links and resources, plus notes (just under ten percent of the text) are included in this very practical, if sometimes dry, guide.