Bio of Paul Attewell

Paul Attewell, a professor of Sociology and Urban Education at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, has spent his career addressing public policy dilemmas in education.

Besides his work on Passing the Torch, he has researched the policy of requiring more advanced coursework from high school students and whether remedial education works for college students. His work has been supported by grants from the National Science, Ford, Andrew Mellon and Spencer foundations.

His current research projects include a qualitative evaluation of inner city public school students who are being paid 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.

Attewell earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from University College at the University of London in 1971 and his doctorate in sociology from the University of California-San Diego in 1978. In 1978 and 1979, he was a National Institute of Mental Health post-doctoral fellow at the University of California-Berkeley.

From 1979 to 1983, he taught at the University of California-Santa Cruz and from 1983 to 1990, at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. The year before joining the Graduate Center faculty, he was a visiting professor at Stern Graduate School of Business at New York University.