Caroll co-founded the University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center (CPC) in addition to serving as executive director for its first ten years. He received his doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1981, taught at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York and at New York University, and returned to the University of Chicago as Associate Dean of Humanities in 1994.

In addition to establishing the CPC in 1999, Caroll served on the majority of its research projects, helping produce a comprehensive map of minority participation in Chicago cultural institutions and contributing to Entering Cultural Communities: Diversity and Change in Nonprofit Arts. With Norman Bradburn, he served as director of a large-scale study of cultural infrastructure in the United States. He also serves as a trustee of several cultural organizations in Chicago.