Mitchell L. Stevens papers (Ms.2008.001)

Biographical note

Mitchell L. Stevens holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University, from which he earlier earned an M.A. degree. Trained as an organizational sociologist, his interests lie in higher education, alternative schooling and the quantification of academic achievement. He became interested in the home school movement through friends who were successfully homeschooling their own children. Their experience prompted his in-depth investigation into homeschooling in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the United States, which became the topic of his doctoral dissertation. The dissertation was revised and published as Kingdom of Children : Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement, published by the Princeton University Press in 2001.

More recently, Stevens has focused on aspects of higher education in his research. He is the author of Creating a Class : College Admissions and the Education of Elites (2007). He has taught sociology at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York (1996 through 2003), and in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Educational Sociology.