Paul Attewell

Curriculum Vitae

Paul Attewell is a professor of sociology and of urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research interests include the sociology of education, inequality and stratification, and social impacts of information technology.

His most recent book, Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations? (co-authored with Professor David E. Lavin), won the Outstanding Book award of the American Educational Research Association in 2009, and also the 2009 Grawemeyer Prize in education.

Professor Attewell has also published research on the policy of requiring more advanced coursework from high school students, and on whether remedial education works for college students. His current research projects include a qualitative evaluation of inner city public school students who are being paid monetary incentives to do well on standardized tests, and a separate project that looks at college graduation, stopping out, and dropping out among working and commuter undergraduates. He has received grants to support his research from the National Science Foundation, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Spencer Foundation.

Attewell earned his doctorate in sociology from the University of California-San Diego in 1978. Before joining the Graduate Center faculty, he taught at the University of California-Santa Cruz; the State University of New York, Stony Brook; and Stern Graduate School of Business at New York University.