[3] Grubb was born in Santiago, Chile while his father was on foreign assignment with the Eastern Standard Oil Company (ESSO).
[4] They relocated to San Francisco when Norton accepted a position as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley[6] and Rikki joined the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as an attorney.
[4] In 1978, Grubb accepted a position as an assistant professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.
[3] He explored the role of education in labor markets and proposed ways to improve the effectiveness of high schools and community colleges.
He pointed out that when schools excessively follow patterns in the labor market, they tend to reinforce the inequities of society against minorities and women.