Dr. David Bills

Dr. David Bills
University of Iowa

David Bills is Professor of Sociology of Education and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Graduate Programs in the University of Iowa College of Education. Before coming to Iowa in 1985 he served for three years on the faculty of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and was a visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin in 1981.

Professor Bills's research interests are in education and the workplace, labor markets, technological and organizational change, educational demography, and social inequality. He is the author of The Sociology of Education and Work, as well as two edited volumes (one on job training and the other on comparative social stratification). He is collaborating with colleagues at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) on a project examining trends in the hiring and training practices of German and U.S. employers over the past twenty years and with colleagues at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil on the role of education in a developing society.

Bills served as Chair of the Educational Policy and Leadership Studies at the University of Iowa, as the Iowa Director for the Midwest Sociological Society, and as chair of the Society's Publication Committee. He directed the Honors Program of the American Sociological Association, is the past chair of the ASA's Committee on Undergraduate Education, and served on the ASA Task Force on Community Colleges.