THE ACADEMIC PROFESSION: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Thesis for the Degree 0? Ph. D.
PfifiCHIGAPé SIATE UNEVERSFI‘Y
IAMES RICHARD COVERT
1972

 
   
   
   

  

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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

THE ACADEMIC PROFESSION:
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

presented by

James Richard Covert

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph . D degree in Education

 

 

 

Date August 10, 1972

0-7639

 

 

ABSTRACT

THE ACADEMIC PROFESSION: A CRITICAL
ANALYSIS

BY

James Richard Covert

This study analyzed the relationship between the
increasing impact of social forces in American society and
the decline of professionalism in higher education.

The review of literature began with an examination
of several definitions of professional terminology, cul-
minating in a comparison of the academic profession with
an ideal professional model. To further examine the
discrepancies exposed by this comparison, two conceptual
models of the professions were evaluated for their ability
to explain the academic profession. The idea of the pro-
fessionalizing society was also examined.

The role of the scholar was investigated from three
different perspectives: a quasi-fictional view, by socio-
logical typologies, and from empirical research, based on
the ordering principle of the professions. To set the
role of the professor in the proper social context a brief

historical review of higher education was conducted

James Richard Covert

emphasizing the recurrent themes that have steadily moved
the academic profession toward a central position of power
in the American society. Special attention was paid to
the intensity of the social forces following World War II
and their effect on the deprofessionalization of the
university professor.

From this accumulated information, four indicators
of professionalism were selected with which to judge the
level of professionalization of the academic profession.
They were: client designation, politicalization,
bureaucratization and unionization. It was found that
colleagues are most often designated as clients, allowing
client discretion and evaluation which is non-professional.
Politicalization was found to be the most destructive of
professionalism because it struck at the epistomological
basis of the university and threatens to redefine the
function of the university from the objective search for
truth to the solution of value laden social problems.

The university professor has accommodated his pro-
fessional role to the bureaucratic organizational structure
by establishing a delicate balance. Faculty unionization
threatens to destroy this organizational balance and
redefine the role of the faculty in the university. While
each of these threaten professional autonomy, the situation
is of such a critical nature that this kind of reorganiza-

tion may be necessary to revitalize the American university.

James Richard Covert

This study proposes that two kinds of alternative
organizational structures will arise to relieve the
pressures currently exerted on the university and allow
for the relief of the crisis situation. One system will
be a separate and specialized organizational structure,
existing as adjunct social institutions. They will
decentralize the functions of the university to equally
autonomous social institutions thereby alleviating the
university of such responsibilities as massive research,
certain extension and consulting services as well as some
social action programs. The second distinct organizational
pattern will be parallel structures constructed within the
university as colleagual organizations. They will be
established to bargain collectively and equalize the
distribution of power among such groups as faculty unions,
administrative organizations and student groups. The
relocation of functions presently residing in the university
to new social institutions, coupled with realignments of
power within the university itself, will produce a climate
in which the professoriate will become more protective of

a professional ideology.

THE ACADEMIC PROFESSION: A CRITICAL

ANALYSIS

BY

James Richard Covert

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Social Foundations

1972

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people are responsible for each doctoral
degree, but decorum and brevity dictate that only a few
be thanked.

Principally there are those who provided encourage-
ment and assistance when problems were overwhelming. They
are my committee members, Dr. Marvin Grandstaff who, as
an exemplary chairman offered assistance and scholarly
insight whenever needed in guiding the final draft to
completion; Dr. Ann Olmstead who provided the conceptual
hooks, directed the research and shaped the final socio-
logical overtones; and Dr. Frank Blackington III who made
significant contributions to the text by way of theoretical
criticism and provided several hours of consultation con-
cerning future interests and directions. Dr. James McKee
is responsible for the basic underpinnings of sociological
thought by his elegant presentation of complex issues in an
understandable way.

In addition there is the group that provided
support, both financial and spiritual. In my case they
include Dr. Carl Gross, Dr. Cole Brembeck, Dr. William

Sweetland and Dr. Duane Ullrey.

ii

Finally, there is the group of socializers who
radicalized and shaped my educational thinking by testing
all ideas and continuously offering friendship. These were
the last of the Ed. 450 graduate assistants. The education
that I received from them was exciting and enduring and is
the essence of my doctoral program. My special thanks go
to Mary Rainey, Peter Flynn, Peter Remender, Frank Shepard,
Ram Chattulani, Cornell Silea, Steve Miller and Elaine
Haglund. Also to Dick and Masuma Downie and Jim Kaminsky.
My lovely wife Rosemary has provided all of the above and

much of the credit goes to her.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I O O O O O I O O O

PREFACE

Chapter

I.

II.

III.

IV.

PROFESSIONAL CONCEPTS AND MODEL . .

Professional Concepts Defined . . .
The Ideal Professional Model . . .

THEORIES OF PROFESSIONALIZATION . .

Two Sociological Models for the Professions
The Professionalizing Society . . .

THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR

HISTORY PRIOR TO WORLD WAR II . . .

A History of the Academic Profession

Origin: The Middle Ages . . .
The Colonial College . . . . .
The Civil War Period . . . . .
Critics of the Turn of the Century
The Twenties and Thirties . . .

HISTORY AND DEPROFESSIONALIZATION SINCE
WORLD WAR II . . . . . . . .

The
The
The
The
The

Four Indicators of Professionalism:

Impact of Social Forces Since World War

Social Climate: World War II .
Social Climate of the 1960's . .
Social Climate of the 1970's . .
Decline of Academic Professionalism

Designation . . . . . . . .
Politicalization/Politicization . .
Bureaucracy and Unionization . . .

iv

Client

II

Page
ii

Vi

22

22
34

51
80

80
80
87
89
92
98

107

107
110
116
119
122

124
130
143

Chapter Page
VI. ALTERNATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES . . . 152

153
157

Parallel Structures . . . . . .
The Third Party: Student Unions . .
Separate and Specialized Institutional

Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Reformulation of Academic Structure . . . . 165
Implications for Further Research . . . . . 169

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

PREFACE

While much has been written about the occupation of
college teaching, very little is known about how professors
develop their occupational role. It may appear that there
is no such thing as "the role of professor" but rather a
myriad of alternative roles. To the casual observer it
would appear that each professor has created his own occu-
pational role with very little similarity one to the next.
If this were the case, then any one person's definition or
description of the role of the professor would be as good
as another's.

Over the years novelists have done an admirable job
in providing a plethora of faculty role portrayals. It may

even be said that they have done most of the work. Such

 

novels as Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, String-

fellow Barr's Purely Academic, Carlos Baker's A Friend in

 

Power, Randall Farrell's Pictures From an Institution and

 

Bernard Malamud's A New Life have not only provided the

 

public with an insight into the lives of professors but
may have structured the aspirations of those wanting to
join this elite group. More recently the movies have run

the professional gamut from a musical version of Goodbye

Vi

Mr. Chips, to Burton's vivid protrayal in Who's Afraid of

 

Virginia Wolf.

 

Attempts at a methodical scientific characteriza-
tion have met with limited success. Martin Trow offers
this explanation, positing that the professor views with
suspicion the use of social sciences as an explanatory

device:

. . . it threatens their role as intellectuals,

as interpreters of their own social experience;
because it asserts that much of importance, not
only in the wider society but in their own class-
rooms and students' residence halls, can no longer
be adequately known and understood by the unaided
man of intelligence and sensibility, by the
ordinary faculty member. The very existence of
social research on campus, as some professors

put it in more candid moments, is an insult to
'their intelligence. And their response, made

with more feeling than logical consistency, is

at once to doubt that social science is more

than a pretentious fraud, and to fear its manipu-
lative consequences if it is as powerful a tool 1
for understanding and control as it pretends to be.

Whether this is the reason or not, the lack of empirical
information about the role of the college professor is
very real.

Logan Wilson, in his classic work The Academic Man,

 

laments the lack of some organized body of knowledge that

might explain the role of the professor.

 

1Martin H. Trow, "Administrative Implications of
Analyses of Campus Cultures," in The Study of Cam us
Cultures, ed. by Terry F. Lumsford (Boulder, CoIo.:
Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, 1963),
p. 102.

vii

Nowhere is there available an overall treatment
such as cultural anthropologists give of primitive
associations, or such as sociologists have set
forth for a few occupational groupings in our
society. Indeed, on the basis of present socio—
logical literature the future historian would have
less difficulty in ascertaining the social
behavior of the railroader, the taxi-dancer, or
the professional thief than he would that of the
contemporary university professor.2

One of the express purposes of Wilson's book was to lay the
basis for additional work in the definition of the role of
the college professor following its publication in 1942.
In 1958, however, Caplow and McGee had this to say about
the accumulation of reliable data concerning college
professors:
The methods of social research have been
applied by university professors to every important
American institution except their own. . . . Aside
from a few pioneer studies of the academic pro-
fession, most of the general writings about educa—
tion have not been based on empirical data.3
This notion was reinforced in 1963 by Burton R. Clark
when he stated,
The social scientist has paid little attention
to the culture of the faculty--the perspectives,
the attitudes and values held in common by a group
of professors, especially as these are distinc-

tively different from those of men located
elsewhere in the social structure.4

 

2Logan Wilson, The Academic Man (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1942), p. 45.

 

3Theodore Caplow and Reese J. McGee, The Academig
Marketplace (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1958), p. 3.

 

4Burton R. Clark, "Faculty Culture," in The Study
of Campus Cultures, ed. by Terry F. Lumsford (Boulder,
Colo.: Western Interstate Commission for Higher Educa—
tion, 1963), p. 39.

 

viii

w-

- 44*

He goes on to indicate that

The 1960's promise greatly expanded research on

faculties, for it is now clear that in the

advanced industrial society--the society of the

technological age--higher education plays an

expanded role in the training of men and their

allocation to adult statuses.
But there seems to be some question whether this research
was ever conducted. Gustad, writing in 1963, states:
"There is a very considerable body of folklore about
college teachers and a small but growing body of research.
The folklore is interesting and sometimes informative; the
research is informative and sometimes interesting."6 And
in 1968, Florence Brawer states, "Two main conclusions may
be drawn from a search of the literature regarding studies
of college and university faculty: the studies are few
and they are inconclusive."7 So, it would seem that there
is still a need for work which may assist in describing
the role of the professor in American society.

There is a growing concern, in the literature,

about the urgency of the situation of the university.

Many of the recent authors are writing about crises of the

 

5Ibid., pp. 39-40.

6J. W. Gustad, "The Complete Academician," Teachers
College Record, LXV (November, 1963), 112.

 

7Florence B. Brawer, Personality Characteristigs of
College and University Faculty (Washington, D.C.: ERIC
Clearinghouse for Junior College Information, American
Association of Junior Colleges, 1968), p. xvi.

 

 

ix

university and the foreboding prospects for the future.
The forward of Robert Nisbet's most recent book, The

Degredation of Academic Dogma: The University in

 

America, 1945-1970, begins with the following sentence:

 

"No one needs to be told that the university in America
is in trouble."8 Henry Steele Commager writes in 1971,

The crisis of the university today is a
tribute to its importance. Within a quarter-
century the university has moved to the very
center of American life; the center of ideas,
the center of research, the center of criticism
and of protest. Students who once went to the
university to prepare for a career or, as we
amiably say, "to prepare for life," now find
that the university is life.

A more precise cataloguing of the difficulties of the
university in crises is done by Lewis B. Mayhew:

As indexes of this mood, all colleges and
universities have begun to experience financial
limitations; private institutions, drOps in
enrollment; public institutions, legislative
scrutiny; and all of them, the constant threat
of campus violence.

In View of this documented information, two very

basic notions undergird this study. The first is the

very real need for research into the role of the college

 

8Robert Nisbet, The Degradation of Academic Dogma:
The University in America, 1945-1970 (New York: Basic
Books, Inc., 1971), p. v.

 

9Henry Steele Commager, "The Crisis of the Uni-
versity," in In Defense of Academic Freedom, ed. by
Sidney Hook (New York: Pegasus, 1971), p. 94.

10Lewis B. Mayhew, "And Now the Future," in Twenty-
Five Years, 1945-1970, ed. by G. Kerry Smith (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 1970), pp. 311-312.

 

X.

P-

I...—

professor, and the second, the crisis situation in which
the university finds itself at this particular point in
time. There is a growing concern that if a continued
ignorance of the role and function of the professor per-
sists, this species will become extinct and no one will
have realized that the extermination was in progress. This
is not to say that the professoriate, as we know it, should
be preserved. There is much that can be improved, but to
do this we should have a better knowledge and understanding
of what it is and what it is likely to become.

In order to better understand the role of the
university professor in the current American society, this
study will use as its ordering principle the concept of the
professional. It is asserted that this better understanding
of the academician as a professional may help to explain
some of the problems faced by the professor in this period
of crisis for the university. Through an analysis of the
continued professionalization of higher education, a system
of alternative organizational structures will be proposed.

The hypothesis under consideration may be stated
in the following manner. The decline of the professional
status of the university professor has been hastened by a
combination of social forces occurring since the end of
the Second World War, and this decline has played a sig-
nificant part in the failure of the university to perform

its intended function.

xi

In order to test this hypothesis it is necessary
to collect and analyze several kinds of information. First
should be an understanding of the concept of the profes-
sional and how it is interpreted by the university pro-
fessor. Second should be a knowledge of the role of the
professor as it has historically developed and as it is
portrayed in the current society. Third is a grasp of the
importance of the social forces as they have shaped the
role of the professor both in the early history of the
American university and more importantly since World War
II. Finally, it will be important to devise, for the
compiled information, a conceptual framework that could

be empirically verified.

xii

CHAPTER I

PROFESSIONAL CONCEPTS AND MODEL

This chapter will contain operational definitions
of terms as they will be used in the remainder of the
study as well as an ideal professional model with its
implications for the academic profession.

The definitions have been obtained from a review
of the literature and will parallel the public usage of
the terms and phrases whenever possible.

A problem immediately arises in trying to identify
the human subject to be investigated by the study. Logan
Wilson assailed this same problem and derived this
workable solution:

Broadly stated, the basic functions of academi-
cians everywhere are the conservation, dissemination,
and innovation of knowledge. So varied and complex
are these tasks, however, that the English language
has no precise generic word for the functionary.

In the line of professional duty, academicians may
be engaged in everything from lecturing to mother's
clubs to peering into the outer limits of the
universe. The words teacher and professor connote
the diffusion of learning, while neglecting other
kinds of endeavor. The word scientist implies
cultural discovery or invention, but under-
emphasizes conservation and dissemination. Using
any existing appellation does some violence to the
fact that the functionary seldom operates exclu-
sively in any one role. As we are obliged to refer
to materials using common designations in a rather
loose sense, we shall refrain from furthering

1

confusion by the coinage of still another term.

Instead, with distinctions noted wherever neces-

sary, the academician will be variously referred

to as a scholar, teacher, educator, researcher

and scientist.
While the job description of the professor still is vague,
it should be clear that his work setting is post secondary
school, or what is generally referred to as higher educa-
tion.

In concurring with the sentiment expressed in the
preceeding passage one further clarifying point should be
added subsequent to its writing in 1942. There has evolved
a distinction between persons employed in those two year
institutions usually designated as community colleges,
junior colleges and agricultural and technical institutes
and those persons employed in primarily four year institu-
tions often with an affiliated graduate school. More
recently there has developed a further specialization
within higher education that has been designated as upper
division, or senior college. This division often emphasizes
teaching but may be closely affiliated with a graduate
school also.

It is generally considered that faculty members in
four year institutions have three primary responsibilities,

research, teaching and public service, while two year

college and upper division faculty members are primarily

 

1Wilson, The Academic Man, pp. 3-4.

 

responsible for teaching and may, in addition, perform
some public service functions or even conduct research.
But the instances of research and public service functions
are usually much less frequent in the two year colleges.
While there are some developmental and programmatic dif-
ferences between these three branches of higher education
for the purpose of this study, their similarities will be
emphasized more than their differences.

The greatest differences among these three groups
are the result of the faculty socialzation programs under-
gone in both education and work experience. The certifying
credential for the four year and the senior college is
usually the Ph.D. degree. The Masters Degree is the major
certifying credential for the two year college. These two
educational programs differ in emphasis, duration of
training, and exposure to such important socializing
features as faculty, students and colleagues. It is quite
possible that individuals undergoing these two different
socialization processes might perform quite differently in
their career role as professor. But this difference might
be less significant than the training received by two
individuals in the same degree program but in different
departments within the same university. Therefore, this
study will operate on the assumption that there is more
variance within each group of faculty members than there

is between the three separate institutional groupings.

The division of faculty members in junior colleges,
senior colleges and four year colleges is an illustration
of a trend that will be discussed in the final chapter of
this study. It seems quite logical that the post-modern
American society will continue to segment and compartment-
alize its social institutions even further into junior,
senior, four year, and graduate colleges, centers of
scientific research, centers providing primarily profes-
sional and graduate training and centers for vocational
and career specializations. It is interesting to note
that while the four year institutions have provided most
of the behavioral models for the two year colleges, the
unionization movement had its origins and developed its
impetus in the two year, junior and community colleges.
This illustrates an important professional discrepancy
that should be investigated but is beyond the scope of

this study.

Professional Concepts Defined
For several centuries scholars have attempted to
define and give meaning to the term 'profession.‘ Its
elusiveness may be a direct result of its intimate con-
nection with the society. The origin of the term is the
topic of some dispute, except there seems to be a common

understanding of the oldest profession.

A most useful discussion of the professions has
been forwarded by Vollmer and Mills. In clarifying the
usage of the term they suggest "that the concept of pro-
fessionalization be used to refer to the dynamic process
whereby many_occupations can be observed to change certain
crucial characteristics in the direction of a profession."2
This is differentiated from professionalism which refers
"to an ideology and associated activities that can be found
in many and diverse occupational groups where members
aspire to professional status."3 They go on to state that
"professionalism may be a necessary constituent of pro-
fessionalization, but professionalism is not a sufficient
cause for the entire professionalization process."4 This
distinction between the process and ideology will be
observed during this study.

Herbert Blumer states that

Professionalization seeks to clothe a given area
with standards of excellence, to establish rules
of conduct, to develop a sense of responsibility,
to set criteria for recruitment and training, to
ensure a measure of protection for members, to
establish collective control over the area, and

to elevate it to a position of dignity and social
standing in the society.

 

2H. M. Volmer and D. C. Mills, eds., Professionali-
zation (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1966),
p. vii.

31bid., p. viii.

41bid.

 

51bid., p. xi.

This distinction between professionalism and pro-
fessionalization seems to be quite clear, but it does not
explain what it is to be a professional or how one identi-
fies a profession. A further explanation of professional-
ization may help to clarify this point. The process of
professionalization is usually pictured as a series of
steps which an occupation progresses through on its way
to becoming a profession. These steps have been suggested
by several authors and are compiled by Harold Wilensky in
his article "The Professionalization of Everyone."6
Briefly stated, the steps in order are the following:
first, the occupation becomes a terminal career; second,
there is the establishment of a training school; third,
there is the formation of a professional association;
fourth, is the winning of public support either by law or
by public affirmation; and finally, comes the adoption of
a formal code of ethics. The successful completion of
this series of steps should lead to the position of a
professional. But there are many occupations that have
undergone this process and have never been designated a
profession. There are two further choices remaining:
they can choase to become further professionalized, indi-
cating that a mere progression through these steps is not

enough, or they can lose some of the attributes of a

 

6Harold L. Wilensky, "The Professionalization of
Everyone," The American Journal of Sociology, LXX

(September, 1964), 137-158.

 

profession and begin to decline, or deprofessionalize.
The notion of further professionalization and deprofes-
sionalization is extremely important to the future of the
academic profession.

It is partially for these reasons that Vollmer and
Mills use profession only as an ideal type and not as any
occupational organization which exists in reality. To
them a profession is the model form of an occupational
organization that would result if any occupational group
became completely professionalized. They suggest that the
term profession refer only to the abstract model and

professional groups be used to refer to associa-
tions of colleagues in an occupational context
when we observe that a relatively high degree of
professionalization has taken place. Profession-
als, then, are those who are considered by their
colleagues to be members of professional groups.

While this distinction between professional groups
and the profession as an ideal model is extremely important
and useful, it is awkward and poorly understood by the
public. For the purposes of this study, the term pro-
fession will be used to indicate those occupational
groupings that are usually considered to have gained the
title of profession by undergoing professionalization and
having achieved the recognition of the society.

In an effort to clarify the definition of a pro-

fession, an extensive review of the literature was

 

7Vollmer and Mills, Professionalization, p. viii.

 

undertaken by Morris Cogan. He compiled the following
comprehensive definition which will serve as a beginning
effort to understand this complicated concept. He states,

A profession is a vocation whose practice is
founded upon an understanding of the theoretical
structure of some department of learning or
science, and upon the abilities accompanying such
understanding. This understanding and these
abilities are applied to the vital practical
affairs of man. The practices of the profession
are modified by knowledge of a generalized nature
and by the accumulated wisdom and experience of
mankind, which serve to correct the errors of
specialism. The profession, serving the vital
needs of man, considers its first ethical
imperative to be altruistic service to the
client.8

This definition seems to be complete and compre-
hensive but still fails to provide an adequate level of
understanding. Turning to some of the other authors, a
pattern develops that will help to place the concept of
profession in the proper perspective for this study.

In 1915, Abraham Flexner did his pioneering work
in the professions and identified six major components of
a profession. He labeled professional activity as

basically learned, requiring much intellect to grasp the

 

large amount of information that it was necessary to
master. This knowledge was not to be applied routinely

to every situation. The techniques of the profession

 

could be taught to those of high intellect and were

8Morris L. Cogan, "Toward a Definition of Pro-
fession," Harvard Educational Review, XXIII (Winter,
1953), 48-151

 

primarily practical rather than academic or theoretical.

 

Professions had a strong internal organization and worked

 

for some aspect of good for the society, always motivated

by altruism. After presenting this objective list of

 

criteria for comparing professions to occupations, he
concludes with this statement:
What matters most is professional spirit. . . .
The unselfish devotion of those who have chosen
to give themselves to making the world a fitter
place to live in, can fill social work with the
professional spirit and thus, to some extent
lift it above all the distinctions which I have
been at such pains to make.9
It would seem that the list of objective criteria are
overridden by the moral issues defined as the "genuine
professional spirit."

From this early beginning, many have seen the
value of dividing the definition of profession into two
parts. These two parts are given various names, but the
descriptions remain similar to those originally provided
by Flexner. Harold Wilensky has labeled this division
in the first part as technical, based on systematic
knowledge or doctrine and the latter portion, as a set
of professional norms based on the moral considerations

of the profession. Richard Hall has fortified this

definitional division with some interesting research

 

9Abraham Flexner, "Is Social Work a Profession,"
Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and
Correction (Chibago: Hellmann Printing Co., ,
p. 590.

10

that indicates that as one portion advances (the defini-
tional portion that he calls structural), the other portion
(that which he calls ideological) may actually decline.

The notion that these two may not vary together is the
reason for a more extensive examination of the Hall and
Wilensky studies in a later chapter.

Peter Berger adds still another dimension to the
division of the definition when he proposes a possible
conflict resulting from individual perceptions of these
two parts of the professional definition. He is concerned
that the way the role is reconstructed in reality (the
structural portion) may be quite different from, and in
conflict with, the individual's prior conception (the
ideological portion) of what the role should be. He cites
such things as formal education requirements, certifica—
tion standards and bureaucratic restraints, as limiting to
the amount of self-realization that any individual can
receive from fulfilling a professional role, especially if
his ideology of the profession involves a high "sense of
calling."

Howard Becker provides the most detailed explana-
tion of the ambiguities present in the definition. He
states,

On the one hand, profession is used as a
scientific concept. Carefully defined with a
precise list of differentia, the term is meant
to point to an abstract and objectively dis-

criminable class of human phenomena. It is a
verbal tool with which the social scientist

11

isolates a particular kind of occupational
organization for further analysis and investi-
gation, . . . In using this term, the social
scientist means it to be as neutral and
descriptive as other concepts he uses, like
bureaucracy or Crow kinship system.

However, when used in the ordinary language of our society,

it portrays a morally desirable kind of work.

Instead of resembling the biologist's concep-

tion of a mammal, it more nearly resembles the

philosopher's or theologian's conception of a

good man. It is a term of invidious comparison

and moral evaluation; in applying it to a

particular occupation people mean to say that

the occupation is morally praiseworthy just as,

in refusing to apply it to another occupation,

they mean to say that it is not morally worthy

of the honor.11
In this conflict, Becker sees the perennial problem of
trying to reconcile the scientific use of a term with the
usage of the term by the general public. One solution is
to simply regard those occupations fortunate enough to have
gained the honorific title in that particular society as
professions, and those that haven't gained public accept-
ance as less than a profession. There would then be no
such thing as a true profession and no set of character-
istics associated with the title. This kind of definition

admits that the term profession is mainly an honorific

title bestowed by the society.

 

10Howard S. Becker, "The Nature of a Profession,"
Education for‘the Professions, Sixty-first Yearbook of
the National Society for the Study of Education, Part II
(Chicago: Chicago Press, 1962), p. 30.

11Ibid., p. 31.

12

The problem with this stance is that then there is
no way of knowing where a particular occupation stands or
what is necessary for moving from one position to the next
in the process of professionalization. One solution for
this problem is to establish what would be the most
desirable professionalized state or an ideal professional

model.

The Ideal Professional Model

Howard Becker has compiled a set of criteria which
may be combined to provide an ideal professional model.
In doing this he avoids some of the pitfalls described
previously and gives a reference point by which it may be
possible to judge the merit of the university professor as
a professional. By describing an ideal model it is
possible to avoid listing the criteria of existing occupa-
tions as professional or nonprofessional. It will also
avoid the problem of compromising the scientific with the
public definition. This approach postulates that there
is substantial agreement on a set of interconnected
characteristics which symbolize a morally praiseworthy
kind of occupational organization, which is viewed as an
honorific symbol used by our society. Becker never
intended his model to be taken literally as something
that all professions should work toward, but rather as an

ideal to be used to measure the degree of

13

professionalization of various occupational groups. The
following description is taken from his article, "The
Nature of a Profession."

Professions as commonly conceived, are occupa-
tions which possess a monopoly of some esoteric
and difficult body of knowledge. Further, this
knowledge is considered to be necessary for the
continued functioning of the society. What the
members of the profession know and can do is
tremendously important, but no one else knows
or can do these things.

The body of knowledge over which the profes-
sion holds a monopoly consists not of technical
skills and the fruits of practical experience but,
rather, of abstract principles arrived at by
scientific research and logical analysis. This
knowledge cannot be applied routinely but must be
applied wisely and judiciously to each case. This
has several consequences.

In the first place, it is supposed that only
the most able people will have the mental ability
and the proper temperament to absorb and use such
knowledge. Therefore, recruitment must be
strictly controlled, to ensure that those who are
not qualified do not become members of the pro-
fession. Recruitment is controlled, first, by
careful weeding out of prospective candidates, and,
then, by a lengthy and difficult educational process
which eliminates those who were mistakenly selected.
Lengthy training is considered necessary anyway,
because the body of knowledge is supposed to be so
complex that it cannot be acquired in any shorter
time.

Secondly, it is felt that entrance into pro-
fessional practice must be strictly controlled,
and that this control must ultimately lie in the
hands of members of the profession itself. Diffi-
cult obstacles, in the form of examinations of all
kinds, must be surmounted by candidates for
practice, and no one must be allowed to practice
who has not so demonstrated his competence. This
means that the police power of the state must be
utilized, through the device of licensure pro-
cedures, to control entrance into practice. But
if the knowledge monopolized by the profession is
so difficult to acquire, it follows that no layman
can fully acquire it and, therefore, that the
governmental bodies which grant licenses must be

l4

controlled by members of the profession itself.
Similarly, the approval and accreditation of
educational institutions and procedures must also
be done by members of the profession. In short,
the professional, by virtue of the esoteric
character of his professional knowledge, is free
of lay control.

Finally, since recruitment, training, and
entrance into practice are all carefully con-
trolled, any member of the professional group
can be thought of as fully competent to supply
the professional service.

Any profession which so monopolizes some
socially important body of knowledge is likely
to be considered potentially dangerous. It might
use its monopoly to enrich itself or enlarge its
power rather than in the best interests of its
clients. The symbol of the profession, however,
portrays a group whose members have altruistic
motivations and whose professional activities are
governed by a code of ethics which heavily
emphasizes devotion to service and the good of
the client and condemns misuse of professional
skills for selfish purposes. This code of ethics,
furthermore, is sternly enforced by appropriate
disciplinary bodies. Professional associations
have as their major purpose the enforcement of
such ethical codes.

The client, therefore, is supposed to be able
to count on the professional whose services he
retains to have his best interests at heart. He
rests comfortable in the knowledge that this is
one relationship in which the rule of the market
place does not apply. He need not beware but can
give his full trust and confidence to the pro-
fessional who is handling his problems; the service
given him will be competent and unselfish.

If the client is to trust the professional
completely he must feel that there are no other
interests which will be put before his in the per-
formance of the professional activity. Among the
other interests which might intrude are the
interests related to institutions within which
the professional makes his career. Thus, the
ideal professional is a private practitioner, in
business for himself, so to speak. He has no
ties to a superior officer or bureaucratic system
of rules; he receives his income directly from
fees paid by the client, not from any third party.

 

12Ibid., pp. 35-37.

15

One final element of the ideal professional model
is the image of the profession and the professional as
occupying an esteemed position in the society. Members of
the professions are accorded high status and prestige and
are often considered among the elite.

Given this as the ideal professional model, it may
be instructive to see the points of conflict and agreement
when the academic profession is held up against this
theoretical construct.

First is the notion that a profession has a
monopoly on some difficult body of esoteric knowledge.
There is little doubt that academic knowledge is esoteric
and often difficult. Much of the mystique surrounding the
academic profession is practiced to portray a high level
of difficulty. However, in many of the recently emerging
disciplines it is difficult to establish if there is a
body of knowledge that is unique to that particular
discipline. Many of these disciplinary fields are
amalgamations of knowledge borrowed from several other
disciplines and applied to their own field of interest.

It is even more difficult to establish a monopoly of any
particular academic body of knowledge. One of the
primary functions of the professor is to prevent a
monOpoly of knowledge by the dissemination of information.
So, while academic knowledge is usually esoteric and
difficult, it should not be the private domain of the

professor.

16

One further difficulty is encountered when the
question is asked if the knowledge of the university pro-
fessor is necessary for the continued functioning of
society. This question will be explored further in a
later chapter, but it is important to remark here that
there are several other social institutions that perform
many of the same functions that the university provides
as far as conservation, dissemination, innovation and
creation of knowledge, but there is no single institution
that engages so many youth in a non-producing capacity
for as long a period of time as the university. This may
indeed be the indispensible function of the university,
which may lead to a very real conflict between the pro-
fessors, who are teaching for students to learn, and the
students, who are present mainly for socialization into
adult roles.

Secondly, one of the most obvious conflicts of
the ideal model and the university is its application of
"abstract principles arrived at by scientific research and
logical analysis" not routinely but wisely and judiciously
applied in each case. The college teacher as the pro-
fessor of abstract principles is under constant attack to
make things relevant. He is also forced to apply his
knowledge routinely rather than in each individual case.
Large university enrollments, conflict of interests among

the three basic functions and a confusion of roles to be

l7

played by the professor, often prevent the professor from
performing his role in accordance with the ideal pro-
fessional model.

Thirdly, the recruitment and entrance of members
into the academic profession is quite tightly controlled
by the certifying professional doctoral members and these
requirements closely parallel the ideal model. There is,
of course, a great variance among the certifying bodies,
but this is a question of quality control rather than a
question of compliance with the ideal model. Even though
the profession reflects these controlling criteria, one of
the paradoxes of the university professor is his sub-
serviance to "lay control." This lay control comes in
many forms and can be seen as student evaluation sheets,
alumni pressure groups, boards of trustees, university
administrators and the public; as legislators, private
contributors or government granters.

Fourthly, there is no profession where each member
is thought to be fully competent to supply its "central
professional service" and college teaching is no exception.
Not all college professors are equally competent in all of
the basic functions they are supposed to provide. It is
quite clear to many that professors may not be competent
to supply any of the functions that they are hired to
provide. Not only are there incompetents practicing, but

there are also many levels of competency. This factor

18

becomes important when coupled with the level of the
freedom of student choice. In the ideal model the clients
don't have the knowledge to make choices among the pro-
fessionals and the professionals are all fully competent
to provide the professional service. In actual practice,
students often have formal as well as informal means of
making selections among the available professionals.
Students continually make judgments about which teacher
to select, how much work to do, and whether to attend
class or not. Furthermore, judgments are made about pro-
fessors by various other laymen. Only certain professors
are given research grants and asked to do consultant work,
while others are selected to give speeches, publish
reports and write books. Many groups of clients make
various judgments about professionals contrary to the pro-
fessional model. Although clients often make selections,
they do so on selective criteria which may or may not be
professionally valid in each case. Often selection is
based on non-professional criteria, as much from a lack
of knowledge and understanding as anything. It is still
the rule that the professional has more knowledge than any
of the laymen making the selection.

While the symbol portrays the professional as an
altruistic and ethical practitioner, there are exceptions
in each profession. It may be that some of the unethical

practices are done in ignorance and without malice, but

19

some examples are obviously for monetary gain and clearly
in violation of the commonly held professional ethical
norms. Professors who publish student research and per-
form consulting work at the expense of their university
functions are clearly stretching ethical practice. While
there are several codes of ethics set down by various
academic organizations, there is no single organization
that can claim that their members adhere to the code, nor
is there any stipulation that a professor must join an
organization which has an established code of ethics.
Professors acting in a university setting have
obvious limits on their autonomy. Some of the constraints
are a result of the bureaucratic structure and others are
a result of the nature of the position in the society.
While the bureaucratic hierarchy often protects the pro-
fessor from the demands of the students, it also limits
their decision making ability and often diverts their
time and energies to administrative tasks not always
closely connected to scholarship. There is a subtle
referral system that exists among faculty expecially at
the graduate level. The most desirable students often
seek professors that have interests similar to theirs and
who have expressed themselves in writing. While this
referral system is not as blatant as the medical profession
it does exist, expecially in those disciplines where the

professor can benefit from student research. Often the

20

acceptance of certain students by a professor will limit
the autonomy of that professor in time as well as in ideas,
if he allows the student to pursue his own interests. The
other alternative is relative isolation from students,
which is antithetical to the teaching function of the pro-
fessor. To protect himself he often posts office hours
and meets with students only by appointment. The autonomy
thus gained may be at a greater expense; that of the idea
of the university, and the function of the professor.
Either way there is a loss of autonomy; one is to the
student, the other is to the structure.

The final element of the symbol discussed has to do
with the public acceptance and prestige of the profession.
College teaching has enjoyed a high prestige rating among
the various occupations. It has ranked among the top three
in several surveys in the 19503 and early 19603. But
recently there has been some question about the altruistic
motives of the profession, especially since it has received
a high level of support from various financial sources.

There is one further notion that should be dis-
cussed before continuing, and that is the relationship of
the professor to the university. Is it possible to discuss
the function of the university by viewing the functions of
the faculty that comprise the university? It is obvious
that the university is tied very closely to the interpre-

tation given it by the individual faculty members, but this

21

is not to say that the entire faculty, the administration
and the students are not also important components of the
university. It should be understood that these segments
compose a university which is greater than the sum of its
individual parts. The analysis of the role of the faculty
is not identical to the analysis of the role of the
university. The faculty are only one portion of the
university but are the prime interpreters of the university
function. When politicalization and unionization are dis-
cussed they necessarily involve the faculty, but they also
reflect the functioning of the university. Even though
there is a wide divergency in the functions of any univer-
sity and even a wider divergency in the way that individual
professors interpret their role, the university would not
exist without the faculty and the professional role being
discussed in this study would not exist without the

university.

CHAPTER II

THEORIES OF PROFESSIONALIZATION

Two Sociological Models for
the Professions

 

 

Before further consideration of the academic pro-
fessional, it might be useful to examine some of the
theoretical frameworks which scholars have constructed for
viewing the conceptual problems of the professions.

There are two general sociological models along
which the theory of professions have developed. The oldest
and most universally held model conceptualizes professions
as occupations organized around some vital public service
function that continues through time because of its
necessity to the maintenance of society. This may be
termed the functional or structural functionalist model
because of its emphasis on the centrality of the social
function performed by the profession.

Functionalism sees a profession largely as a

relatively homogeneous community whose members
share identity, values, definitions of role and
interests. . . . There is a steadfast core which
defines the profession, deviations from which are
but temporary dislocations, socialization of
recruits consists of induction into the common
core. There are norms, codes, which govern the
behavior of the professional to insiders and out-

siders. In short, the sociology of professions
has largely been focused upon the mechanics of

22

23

cohesiveness and upon detailing the social structure
(and/or social organization) of given professions.1

Most scholars adhere to this model of the profes-
sions and see no problem in shaping their ideas to the
structural-functionalist theory. Goode used the structural-
functionalist model when he termed the professions a

community.

Its members are bound by a sense of identity.
Once in it, few leave, so that it is a terminal or
continuing status for the most part. Its members
share common values in common. Its role definitions
vis-a-vis both members and non-members are agreed
upon and are the same for all members. Within the
areas of communal action there is a common language,
which is understood only partially by outsiders.

The community has power over its members. Its limits
are reasonably clear, though they are not physical
and geographical, but social. Though it does not
produce the next generation biologically, it does

so socially through its control over the selection
of professional trainees, and through its training
processes it sends these recruits through an adult
socialization process.2

Clearly, Goode provides a vivid illustration of the
structural-functionalist position.

Bucher and Strauss have developed the other major
model, building on the earlier work of Everett Hughes in
occupations and professions and the symbolic interaction
position of George Herbert Mead in social psychology.

Bucher and Strauss criticize the functionalist position

 

1Rue Bucher and Anselm Strauss, "Professions in
Process," The American Journal of Sociology, LXV (January,
1961), 325.

2William J. Goode, "Community Within a Community:
The Professions," American Sociological Review, XXII
(April, 1957), 194.

 

 

24

because of its failure to account for many significant

aspects of professions.

Particularly does it bias the observer against
appreciating the conflict--or at least difference--
of interests within the profession; this leads him
to overlook certain of the more subtle features of
the profession's "organization" as well as to fail
to appreciate how consequential for changes in the
profession and its practitioners differential
interests may be. In actuality, the assumption of
relative homogeneity within the profession is not
entirely useful: there are many identities, many
values, and many interests.

The Bucher and Strauss model emphasizes the more
dynamic nature of the professions and pictures the
divergencies from the norms as more than simple adjust-
ments within the large homogeneous organizational pattern.
These differences within the professions lead to separate
and obviously distinct groups that they call segments.

They (segments) tend to become patterned and

shared; coalitions develop and flourish--and in
opposition to some others. . . . We shall develop
the idea of professions as loose amalgamations of
segments pursuing different objectives in different
manners and more or less delicately held together

under a common name at a particular period in
history.4

They call this the process model of professions.
In using the medical profession as an example they

illustrate their case in the following way.

 

3Bucher and Strauss, "Professions in Process,"
p. 326.

4Ibid.

25

Of the medical profession as a whole a great
deal could be, and has been, said: its institu-
tions; its personnel; its organizations; its
recruitment policies; its standards and codes;
its political activities; its relations with the
public; not to mention the professions' informal
mechanisms of sociability and control. All this
minimal 'structure' certainly exists.

But we should also recognize the great
divergenCy of enterprise and endeavor that mark
the profession; the cleavages that exist along
with the division of labor; and the intellectual
and specialist movement that occur within the
broad rubric called 'organized medicine.‘5

A more careful examination of the categories
devised by Bucher and Strauss may help to understand appli-
cation of this model to the academic profession. They
claim that these categories represent more than areas of
disagreement; they picture situations within a profession
where various individual segments represent very dif-
ferent answers to the problems presented. These categories
are theoretical constructs which appear to have in common
only their ability to generate the separate segments that
produce new definitions of problems.

First is the sense of mission; which refers to a

 

unique contribution of a particular segment within the
profession, spawned from a conflict with the power segment
and emphasizing its own peculiar contribution. An academic
example of this phenomenon might be the Agricultural
Extension Service which began as an adjunct of the

University Agriculture Department for the dissemination of

 

51bid.

:r_ A_A_—-—4 1

26

information. It now has a life of its own, performing
teaching and public service functions and often vying for
the same money as its previous parent. The sense of
mission of these two sub-groups have developed quite
differently within the university and each may be thought
of as a segment, one with primarily a research mission and
the other with a clinical mission. Other examples of the
separation of the research, teaching and service into
separate segments each with a distinct sense of mission
could be readily described. It should be noted that this
example of the separation of a sense of mission produced
the establishment of a specialized and separate social
institution for the performance of different and distinct
social functions.

Second is work activities; meaning the kinds of

 

work the professional should be doing, how the work should
be organized and the priority of the tasks. As stated
earlier, the work activities of the university professor
are divided among at least these three tasks: teaching,
research, and public service. It is generally conceded
that each professor should conduct a sufficient amount of
research to keep his teaching current. But within a single
English Department it is possible to describe professors
who (a) divide their time equally between research and
teaching with virtually no public service performed;

(b) administer the department, perform public relations

27

work and do no teaching; or (c) publish best selling novels
which may require a major portion of their time but have
little or nothing to do with their teaching (e.g., Erich
Segal, Yale professor of literature and author of £232
Stggy). Other examples could be cited within any depart-
ment, but these three clearly establish a varying sense of
priorities, and a significant disagreement of how work
should be organized. There exists in this example a basic
disagreement on what the most characteristic professional
act in this particular discipline might be.

The third is methodology and techniques, referring
to the methods employed in performing those acts said to be
professional. Differing Opinions of research and teaching
methods and techniques are a vital part of the university
setting. It may indeed be the way that academic progress
is made. New methods that arise from theory and practice
often secure converts who become disciples and establish
dogmatic doctrines which create entirely new disciplines
within the university, perhaps even leading to new pro-
fessions within the society. Various branches of medicine
might be cited as examples. Colleges of osteopathy, schools
for chiropractors and courses in acupuncture all support
quite different claims of truth resulting in different
methodology and techniques.

The fourth is clients; the professional client

relationship is usually pictured as monolithic

28

superior-subordinate relationship, however this is often
not the case on the American university campus. While
there seems to be a general trend toward more student
involvement in decision making, both in the classroom and
out, some colleges and departments adhere to the superior-
subordinate, teacher-student relationship. There are
those that see the students included in the community of
scholars more as colleagues than apprentices to the master.
Several colleges have been founded along these ideas and
established separately precisely because of their incom-
patability with the more traditional system. The building
of these new kinds of programs could be taken clearly as
process model segments constructed from basic disagreements
on the proper client relationship for the academic pro-
fession.

The fifth is colleagueship:

 

Insofar as colleagueship refers to a relation-

ship characterized by a high degree of shared

interests and common symbols, it is probably rare

that all members of a profession are even poten-

tially colleagues. It is more feasible, instead

to work with a notion of colleagueship.6
This may be especially true of the academic profession where
members of different disciplines have widely divergent
interests and perform many different roles within the
institution. There are certain cliques or groups that have

a unique mission rather than a shared mission with others,

 

6Ibid., p. 331.

29

even in the same discipline. In large departments the
administrative personnel such as deans and assistant deans
often group together and perform a unique mission quite
different from the teaching faculty of the same department.
It is also the case that one particular group may have more
in common with a neighboring discipline that it does with
the remaining members of its own discipline. In the field
of Chemistry, there are separate groups which have specific
applications outside the field of chemistry and often pro-
ject their allegiences in that direction rather than within
their own academic department. Those members of organic
chemistry freely admit their separation from inorganic
chemistry, which is equally distinct from physical chemistry.
The language spoken by biochemists could scarcely be under-
stood by the inorganic chemist and would have much more in
common with the biophysicist or the nutritionist. The
interests of the colleagues in any one professional depart-
ment may be quite varied as an accounting of the journals
on any one professor's desk might prove.

The final four categories have to do with power
distribution. The first two Bucher and Strauss call
interests and associations. They identify interests with
a sense of fate or destiny, and see associations as serving
those interests by exercising power. The sense of fate of
a profession may bezcontrolled by one major interest group

but that often does not prevent several other lesser

30

interest groups from establishing contravening power bases
of their own.

An interesting example of interests and associations
controlling the sense of fate has develOped recently in
relation to the question of faculty unionization. Many
professors in certain departments may be inherently opposed
to faculty unions. There are other faculty members within
the same departments that agree in principle but believe
their fate is sealed by the advent of collective bargaining.
Even though they would prefer to remain non-unionized they
picture themselves as only small cogs in a great wheel
turned by the university administration.

In addition, segments could be organized by young
faculty members who see their destiny as servile in long
apprenticeships without tenure. These non-tenured young
members might be joined by a strong contingent of faculty
known as functionaries, who do the routine work of the
university largely without recognition, to form a strong
pro-union movement in order to better their circumstances.
This group would undoubtedly be opposed by the anti-union
movement supported by the "stars" or those individuals that
have wide-spread national and international reputations and
can bargain effectively as individuals. These segments are
present on most campuses that are currently considering

unionization and represent divergent and often very strongly

31

held views. These segments may see their interest served
only by unionization or only by staying out of unions.

In this same regard, the action of associations
involved in the union movement is of great interest. The
National Education Association has gradually shifted its
position to come in line with the more militant Federation
of Teachers Association which has supported unionization
of faculty in higher education. The American Association
of University Professors has long represented the most
"professional" vieWpoint of the national organization and
has Opposed unionization tactics as useful means for
gaining faculty demands. These three associations histori-
cally have represented three very divergent positions and
actually could have been said to espouse separate interests
leading to separate segments. As indicated, the NBA and
the AFT positions have come closer together indicating a
shared interest in unionization, leaving only the AAUP as
the guardian of the "professional segment." An extremely
important development in sense of fate has recently occurred
in the AAUP. They have been designated as the sole bargain-
ing agent for a large mid-western university indicating a
more consolidated sense of fate among the various national
higher education associations and an unwillingness of the
AAUP to maintain its highly professional stance in the face
of significant gains by the more militant, union oriented

organizations. This is a very important development in

32

regard to the sense of fate or destiny projected by the
national associations of higher education.

The final ideas examined are spurious unity and

 

public relations. Bucher and Strauss contend that certain
dominant groups gain a transient power, and through a
public relations front simulate the presence of unity.
These dominant power groups regulate and control the pro-
fession as well as the process of becoming a professional
and so delude themselves into believing they are the locus
of power. The inner circle is usually a tightly knit group
of individuals that jealously guard the institution from
the revolutionary inroads of the young militants. The
spurious unity of the inner group was severely tested in
May of 1970 when many universities throughout the country
were closed down for a period of several days. The
advertised singleness of purpose and outward facade of
unity exhibited by the university administration was dis-
sipated by the militant student and faculty usurpation of
power. were there not dissatisfied segments and some basic
divisions among the faculty, the strike could never have
occurred. Calm has been restored to most campuses, but the
administration is no longer complacent about their position
and there is a new willingness to listen to divergent
opinions about the power structure of the university.

The process theory with its loose amalgamations of

powerful coalitions is a dynamic model that appeals to the

33

common sense notions of how a university operates. It is
not difficult to cite several examples of conflicting
situations where disagreement runs deep and accommodation
seems unlikely. But as indicated previously most scholars
prefer the functional model as the best means of explaining
the professions. They hold that the centrality of the
social function and the deviations from the established
norms are not due to the basic ideological inconsistencies
but rather to the healthy competition of divergent means of
arriving at the same ends. The empirical information
supporting the functional model is more prevalent and more
substantial; but that may be due to its traditional pre-
eminance and ease of collection and measurement. Most of
the information presented in this study is based on the
structural-functional model emphasizing the importance of
professional autonomy and stability achieved through pro-
longed, specialized training in a body of abstract knowledge
oriented to public service. This is not meant to dismiss
the process theory entirely. Quite the contrary, it is
important to recognize and perhaps even emphasize conflicts
as they occur within a profession. Often they may provide
a basis for understanding the dynamic process of change as
it occurs within the academic profession. Bucher and
Strauss provide the reader with the following choice in
their article: "The model can be considered either as a

supplement of, or an alternative to, the prevailing

34

functional model."7 Given this option, most researchers
would prefer to use both models in trying to explain the
very complex concepts of the academic profession. This
study will use both models where they best explain the
ideas under discussion. Generally, the structural-
functionalist model will be used to describe interaction
between the society and the academic profession and the
sociological process model will be used to help describe

interaction within the academic profession.

The Professionalizing Society

 

Many scholars concerned with the modern American

society have conducted research which will help to explain

the trends toward professionalization of most occupations.

In addition, this study is concerned about the continued
professionalization of an established profession and what
steps are necessary to prevent the deprofessionalization
of the academic profession.

An industrializing society is a professionaliz-
ing society. Two indices of this relationship may
be drawn from American experience: One is an
increase in the proportion of the labor force in
the white-collar occupations generally, and the
professions and semi-professions specifically. The
other is the increase in the number of occupations
trying to acquire the symbols of professional
status. . . . Ultimately most occupations will pro-
fessionalize, that is be engaged in developing a
body of abstract knowledge, dedicated to service,
concerned with improving the training of recruits,
and so on. . . . Consequently, an important part

 

7 I”
Ibid., p.I326.

35

of the process by which an occupation becomes a

profession is the gradual institutionalization of

various role relationships between itself and

other parts of the society.8

Goode uses this passage to set the stage for an

overview of the emerging professions. He continues by pro-
viding several insights into professionalization as it is
progressing in the modern American society. He states
that those occupations striving to become professions must
necessarily define some of the present professionals as
incompetent to be able to provide the service they are
proposing. Developing professions must win support for
their position from the public as well as their colleagues.
But the public must not be allowed to evaluate their com-
petency because that would constitute non-professional
behavior. "Professionals admit that they need their
client's cooperation for a good performance; for survival
they also need their client's faith."9 This is further
complicated by the fact that most emerging professions work
in areas where empirical information is incomplete and
difficult to evaluate. In addition, they dare not submit
their claims to scrutiny because that would acknowledge a
higher authority. He further states that these new pro-

fessions are more science than art and so can be inter-

subjectively tested with less need for certification,

8Goode, "Encroachment . . . ," pp. 902-903.

91bid., p. 904.

36

licensure or guild protection. Goode observes that the new
professions increasingly Operate within a bureaucratic con-
text. The current bureaucracy employs an extensive
division of labor which encourages specialization and
employment of experts.

The importance Of the new professionalization move-
ment for the academic profession is explained in this
following passage.

The more usual professional development today,
and one which encompasses a large portion of all
professional work, stresses the marketing of special
scientific skills, without the strong growth of
guild concerns. Such professional fields emerge
from a parent body of knowledge, usually in an
academic context, and their model remains the
academic man. Their professional associations are
not guilds, imposing rigid controls over members
in their client-professional relations, or protect-
ing the guild member against lay evaluations.
Rather, these associations are learned societies.
The allegiance of the members is primarily to the
substantive field, not the guild. Their profes-
sional behavior is guided far more by the ethic of
science than by an ethic of the client-professional
relationship. Their academic counterpart is the
professor who does consulting work.10

In this passage, Goode emphasizes several factors
that have important implications for the academic profes-
sion. Scholars are particular types of professionals
which organize around academic disciplines, which in turn
rely on the scientific method for the validation of their
truth claims. As scientism has overtaken the university,

the professorate has become exposed to the scrutiny of

 

10Ibid., p. 906.

37

scientific evaluation, and been forced to abandon the notion
of teaching as an art.

Goode also lays the groundwork for a compatability
of academics and unions by redefining what it is to belong
to a new professional group; i.e., no rigid controls over
members, expertness freeing them from lay evaluations, and
guidance by the scientific ethic rather than the professional-
client relationship. Finally, he illustrates the compata-
bility of the professions and bureaucracy.

Throughout Western history, most professionals

have been bureaucrats: the military officer, the
clergyman, the university professor, most engineers
and architects, and much earlier, both the lawyer
and the physician.11

Goode characterizes the new professions as having no
precise social definition of when a client may seek a pro-
fessional's help nor is there a definition of what problems
are best served by the profession. There is rather a
definition of skills and knowledge which comprise a field
of study. These new professions, therefore, fail to have
clients with problems. They work on problems that affect
clients.

Goode seems to identify the academic man as the
pattern for the emerging professional. Robert Maynard

Hutchins sees an even closer parallel between the scholar

and the society:

 

llIbid.

38

Business may eventually be organized like a
university, with the staff claiming a kind of
academic freedom, participating in the formation
of policy, and enjoying permanent tenure. Where
that happens the university administrators of
America will derive a certain grim satisfaction
from the struggles of these captains of industry
who have had the habit of complaining about the
mismanagement of universities.12
What they both seem to be indicating is that there
is a new trend in the develOpment Of the professions, and
the pattern of the professional may be changing to closer
emulate the scholar. In the new professions, as in the '
academic profession, it is difficult to know who is client
and who is colleague; who is superior and who is sub-
ordinate. In these complex organizations of bureaucratized
professionals, Hughes is concerned about autonomy:
The problem of freedom becomes one of distin-
guishing between one's obligations to the person,
if it be such a case, on which one performs some
action or to whom one gives some advice, and to
one's employer or organization. . . . As profes-
sions become more organized, business organiza-
tions become more professionalized.l3
T. H. Marshall was one of the early functionalists
who laid much of the groundwork for understanding the
emerging professionalism in his 1939 article "The Recent
History of Professionalism in Relation to Social Structure

and Social Policy." In discussing the development of the

 

12Robert Maynard Hutchins, "The Administrator," in

The Works of the Mind, ed. by R. B. Heywood (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1947), p. 137.

13Everett C. Hughes, "Professions," Daedalus,
XCII (Fall, 1963), 655.

If?

39

social services in England he sees this pattern developing
for the new professions in the modern society.

In short, the professions are being socialized and
the social and public services are being profes-
sionalized. The professions are learning, not
merely to recognize their Obligations to society
as a whole as well as those to individual clients,
but also to break down the traditional isolation
which separated them from one another.14

Marshall believes that the professions are coming to better
fulfill their true public service ideal through a broader

service to the public.

First, that professionalism is an idea based on
the real character of certain services. It is not
a clever invention of selfish minds. Secondly, the
individualistic bias of the major professions was a
product of circumstance. It was not the cornerstone
of the building. Thirdly, the professions today are
being weaned from this excessive individualism and
are adapting themselves to the new standards of
social service.

Everett Hughes, building on Marshall's work twenty-
five years later, found little quarrel with the original I
article. Hughes concurred with Marshall's definition that
the professions are those occupations in which caveat emptor
cannot be allowed to prevail and which, while they are not
pursued for gain, must bring their practitioners an income

of such a level that they will be respected and able to live

 

14T. H. Marshall, "The Recent History of Profession-
alization in Relation to Social Structure and Social
Policy," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political

Science, V (February, 1939), 335-336.

151bid., p. 337.

40

a life of the mind. Hughes pointed out in 1966 that the
social changes had created an even greater dependence of
the modern society on the professions, along with a greater
tendency to work in a complex organization.16

If increased professionalization of the society is
the trend, then there are several important implications
for the academic profession. These professionals must have
more education relating to their occupations, they will
insist on colleague control and evaluations, and they will
shift their routine work to subordinates and claim an area
of expertise in defining the public interest in technical
matters relating to their work. Research has become an
important sign of progress and the researchers have become
increasingly separated from practitioners and actually form
the elite of most professions. So, a sign of further pro-
fessionalization will be the increased division of labor,
resulting in the positions of greatest prestige going to
those furthest removed from practice.

Hughes continues by drawing parallels between
developing professions and the academic profession and
stating that the new organizations have become more staff
than line organized because traditionally the staff profes-
sionals are allowed to display more loyalty to their

colleagues and their profession than their employer. The

 

6 . .

Everett C. Hughes, "The Professions 1n Soc1ety,"
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXVI
(February, 1966), 54.

41

profession provides them with a sense of solidarity, and
autonomy not always provided by the place of employment.
This is also true of many university settings.

Professionals often choose to become part of a
bureaucracy because of their loss of autonomy to their
clients. They become choreboys Of their clients and do not
specialize the way they want to but rather in accordance
with the demands of their clients. As Hughes states it,

The effective freedom to choose one's special

line of work, to have access to the apprOpriate
clients and equipment, to engage in that converse
with eager and competent colleagues which will
sharpen one's knowledge and skill, to organize
one's time and effort so as to gain that end and
customs and Opinions seem in many lines of work
to be much greater for those professionals who
have employers and work inside complicated and
even bureaucratic organizations, than for those
who according to the traditional concept are in
independent practice.17
These three authors provide sound Observations on the
increased professionalization of the society and their
implications for the academic profession become quite
clear upon closer investigation.

Wilensky does not share the notion that everyone
is becoming more professionalized and backs it up with some
empirical research. He states rather emphatically,

If the marks of a profession are a successful

claim to exclusive technical competence and

adherence to the service ideal, the idea that all
occupations move toward professional authority--

 

l7rbid., p. 61.

42
this notion of the professionalization of everyone
is a bit of sociological romance.18
His research questions the universal professionalization of
all occupations and makes several astute observations that
help to clarify the positions presented by the previous
authors.

To support his thesis that the society is not uni-
versally becoming professionalized, he cites several
examples where there are significant deterrents to pro-
fessionalization. His first claim is that a profession
must have a technical basis and that some of these bases
are more acceptable than others. The technical basis is a
program of systematic knowledge or doctrine acquired only
through long prescribed training, and science is the primary
doctrine adhered to by most modern societies. Using this
information, it is possible to construct a continuum with
science based professions at one end and a practical lay
understanding at the other, including spiritual authority
somewhere in the middle but still recognizing it as a
potent validating principle for professions.

As an illustration of this continuum, he cites the

following:

18Wilensky, "The Professionalization of Everyone?"
p. 156.

43

In modern societies where science enjoys extra—
ordinary prestige, occupations which shine with its
light are in a good position to achieve profes-
sional authority. Thus, while medicine has its
sectarian dissenters (chiropractors, osteOpaths and
at one time psychoanalysts), it enjoys more accept-
ance than the ministry, whose doctrines are anchored
in conflicting religious communities. There is
clearly more consensus about the products of applied
science than about spiritual values; the best way to
avoid smallpox is more certain than the best way to
achieve salvation. Nevertheless, in some places the
ministry comes close to science-based professions in
its monopoly of recognized skill while carpentry
does not; many of us might construct a home made
bookcase, few would forego a clergyman at the grave.

19

The academic profession often relies on the sacred
to reinforce the scientific in extending its jurisdictional
claims. College teaching employs both scientific principles
and sacred rites to maintain its professional position in
the eyes of the public. The religious faith expressed by
the public in higher education seems more likely to decline
than their faith in science. There is, however, a threat
to both existing in the society undermining the authority of
the academic profession.

Wilensky continues to support his argument against
the professionalization of everyone by explaining that
technical basis alone is not enough to be designated as
professional. Many craftsmen who are not professional have

a high level of technical competence but they lack something

else.

 

191bid.. pp. 138-139.

“I"?

44

The success of the claim to professional status
is governed by the degree to which the practitioners
conform to a set of moral norms that characterize
the established professions. These norms dictate
not only that the practitioner do technically com-
petent, high-quality work, but that he adhere to a
service ideal-devotion to the client's interests
more than personal or commercial profit should
guide decisions when the two are in conflict.20

He supports the service ideal as the paramount moral claim
for professional status.

This service ideal incorporates several lesser pro-
fessional norms which he cites as important influences on
the various professional relationships. Professional norms
governing client relationships dictate they be impersonal,
objective and provided on an impartial basis. Professional
norms for colleague relationships include avoiding criticism
of colleagues in public, condemning unqualified practi-
tioners, honoring the technical competence of formally
qualified members, and avoiding doing too.little or too
much work. The professional should be aware of his own
limited competence and be ready to refer clients to col-
leagues of greater competence in other specialties. The
erosion of any of these norms will lead to a deterioration
of the professional ideology which will eventually undermine
the profession.

In short, the degree of professionalization is

measured not just by the degree of success in the
claim to exclusive technical competence, but also

 

2°Ibid., p. 140.

45

by the degree of adherence to the service ideal
O O I 21
and Its supporting norms of profe531onal conduct.

In speaking about threats to professionalism,
Wilensky discusses some of those things that may lead to
the deprofessionalization of those established professions
such as university teaching. He speaks about bureaucratic
threats to autonomy in the following passage.

These complex organizations develop their own
controls; bosses, not colleagues, rule--or at
minimum, power is split among managers, professional
eXperts and lay board of directors. The salaried
professional often has neither exclusive nor final
responsibility for his work; he must accept the
ultimate authority of non-professionals in the
assessment of both process and product.22

Strong arguments have been made by Goodman, Berger,
Luckman, Galbraith and others that institutions, once
established, tend to extend and protect themselves for
maintenance of the institution rather than the performance
of the function they were originally established to perform.
Wilensky enlarges this argument, stating that these institu-
tions such as the universities

. . . organize their work in ways that protect the
income, security, and well being of their most
valued personnel--and that where such institutional
considerations are prominant, the technical service
ideal will be threatened, whatever the anxious
effOrt to preserve it. In brief, perhaps bureau-
cracy enfeebles the service ideal more than it
threatens professional autonomy. Both salaried

and self-employed professionals are vulnerable to
loss of autonomy when demand for service is low

 

21Ibid., p. 141.

22Ibid., p. 146.

46

and dependence on powerful clients or bosses

unreceptive to independent professional judgment

is high. But where comfortable organizational

routines take command, the salaried professional

may lose sight of client needs more quickly than

his solo brother.23
The threat to the academic profession is great from both Of
these sources. There is evidence of a break-down in the
service ideal of the university as seen by the public, and
threats to autonomy are coming from student-clients,
research-clients, legislative-clients and the central
administration. It seems like a difficult task to maintain
the service ideal in the face of these difficulties, and
if the service ideal is destroyed, the raison d'etre of the
academic profession will have disappeared.

Wilensky's next deterrent to professionalization is
stated this way:
If the technical base of an occupation consists

of a vocabulary that sounds familiar to everyone or

if the base is scientific but so narrow that it can

be learned as a set of rules by most people, then

the occupation will have difficulty claiming a

monOpoly of skill or even a roughly exclusive

jurisdiction.24
Part of the problem with all of education is that everyone
is acquainted with learning and knowing and each has
experienced a situation where they accomplished some

significant learning and they believe they know how best

they learn. But on the other end of the learning continuum

231bid., p. 148.

24Ibid.

47

are the behaviorists that program steps to learning that
anyone can master. In either case, the threat to exclusive
jurisdiction is great and the lay public has the possibility
of claiming to know and understand everything about the
profession.

To retain their exclusive jurisdiction, all profes-
sionals establish an aura of mystery about their professional
knowledge. The university professor projects the image of a
man who knows so much that all he can communicate is a very
small part. Usually he so cloaks his communication in
jargon that even simple concepts, readily understood by
laymen, take on the quality of the unknown and unknowable.
This tacit component of all professional knowledge is
relatively inaccessible, so it is less subject to criticism
and change and is the basis for the traditionalism (recruits
must pass through the same socializing ritual) and conserva—
tism (there is no other means of knowing) of the established
professions. "The theoretical aspects of professional
knowledge and the tacit elements in both intellectual and
practical knowing combine to make long training necessary
and to persuade the public of the mystery of the craft."25

Wilensky, in speaking about client threat to professionali-

zation says,

 

251bid., p. 150.

48

Perhaps more subversive of autonomy and the
service ideal are pressures from the non-organiza-
tional users of service--where the client is not a
boss but just a customer. . . . In any work context
where the professional lacks strong colleague con-
straints, the customer complaints, real or imaginary,
are likely to receive prompt and costly attention;
his real problems if they require professional
skill, may be overlooked.26

In this final threat to professionalization he destroys the
traditional notion of the professional working alone and
being highly autonomous. Wilensky concludes his argument
by indicating that there is not an increased professionali-
zation of everyone but rather a development of new and
different organizational structures which will be necessary
to accommodate the new power relationships that are in the
future.
The occupational group of the future will

combine elements from both the professional and

bureaucratic models; the average professional man

will combine professional and non-professional

orientations; the typical occupational association

may be neither a trade union nor a professional

association . . . the role orientations of many

professionals reflect a resolution of the clash

between the requirements of profession, organiza-

tion and social movement. Most Obvious, profes-

sional orientations rooted in a colleague group

will increasingly be found mixed with careerist

orientations rooted in a workplace hierarchy.27
Citing some probable role orientations, Wilensky lists the
technical professional who will provide neutral and objec-
tive advice about long-run goals and ongoing programs;

program professionals, with their in-depth specialties

 

261bid., p. 154.

27rbid., p. 157.

49

and expert competence but committed to particular programs
when they act as technical advisor; and the social action
expert who supplies ideology and programs for the profes-
sional stance on public relations and political action.
Speaking of these new role orientations he says,

End products of broad movements of social reform,

these men combine professional standards of work

with programmatic sense and constitute an important

link between professional culture and civil culture,
the man of knowledge and the man of power.23

In reviewing this chapter, the intimate connection
between the society and the professions becomes obvious.
Both sociological models emphasize this interaction and
the examples of writings in professionalization constantly
referred to the interdependency of the professions and the
society. The Wilensky study provides some empirical informa-
tion about the barriers to professionalization of many
occupations and presents information about the fate of the
continued professionalization of the academic profession.
He does not differ greatly from Marshall, Hughes and
Goode in his final analysis.

There is another way to view what is happening

to professionalism: it is not that organizational
revolution destroys professionalism, or that the
newer forms of knowledge (vague human-relations
skills at one extreme, programmed instruction at
the other) provide a poor base for professionalism,
but simply that all these developments lead to
something new. The culture of bureaucracy invades

the professions; the culture of professionalism
invades organizations.29

 

28Ibid., p. 158.

291bid., p. 150.

50

It becomes obvious that the changing social climate
will encourage changes in the academic profession. These
changes will be both structural and ideological and require
new and innovative administrative structures to adapt to

the shifts in equilibrium that are inevitable.

CHAPTER III

THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR

Approximately a quarter of a million persons are
engaged in American college and university teaching, and
this chapter will investigate some of the common functions
that these people share. With increasing enrollments and
confounding of functions the complexity of the bureaucracy
has tended to reconstruct the traditional role function of
the professor. Several groups of persons have tried to
describe the professor (including fictional writers,
theoretical sociologists and empirical researchers) each
having met with varying degrees of success. The first
group might better be classified as quasi-fictional authors.
A professor's rather disgruntled view of the way others see
him was written by Richard Welch.

The image which they entertain of a college

professor is that of someone who has decided not
to enter the race, but rather to live a life of
leisurely calm, chatting with a few students,
browsing through a few books and generally having
a soporific time of it while his more aggressive

companions exhaust themselves in the rat race of
the Communications Industry.1

 

1Richard E. Welch, Jr., "What's the Image?" in The
New Professors, ed. by Robert O. Bower (New York: H & H,
Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1960), P. 17.

 

51

52

A more serious attempt is made by another professor:

The professor is no longer a community land-
mark around whom the legends of veneration arise.
He is no longer a member in a higher personalized
fraternity of colleagues. He is rather, likely
to belong to a large faculty of specialists. He
must face not a circle of students but a room or
lecture hall of students, most of whom he knows
slightly or not at all outside the confines of
the classroom. His discussion is addressed to no
homogeneous group of seekers after knowledge:
pOpular education means diversity in background,
interests, and many levels of intellectual incen-
tives to get a 'college education.‘ And perhaps
most important of all, and but partially graspable
even by professors whose college days were in the
twenties, the students whom he faces know that
college has a direct bearing upon livelihood, and
that marks have a direct bearing upon staying in
college.2

This view may be contrasted with this literary treatment:

And

Professors too often feel that teaching is a
personal and individual activity which takes place
in a classroom and in which their private personal
efforts somehow result in learning by students.

If we regard the teaching accomplished by a college
as embracing all the activities of the college

from which students learn, it becomes apparent that
much of the teaching of a college results from
collaborative rather than individual effort.3

one final example:

A teacher is a veteran of an art, profession,
or science who teaches because he ought to and
must. . . . I do not think that college teaching
is a profession, for it has no proper subject
matter. The sciences that are taught really exist
in the practice of them. The youth taught are too

2John W. Riley, Jr., Boyce L. Ryan and Marcia

Iififlfitz, The Student Looks_at His Teacher (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1950), p. 10.

3John S. Diekhoff, The Domain of the Facultyfin Our

 

Expanding Colleges (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956),

p.

25.

53

old and independent to be objects of professional
attention like children or the sick; yet they are
not like the clients of a lawyer or architect who
are given an Objective service. . . . But at the
college age, one is teaching young people by means
of prOper cultural subjects or even teaching prOper
subjects to them. There is no way to be a master
of subjects without non-academic practice of them;
and it is in that practice, and not as a teacher,
that the college teacher is a professional.4

As in most literature if you looked long enough you would
be able to find something that described the role of the
professor to fit your bias. In viewing this dilemma, one
of the founding fathers of American sociology made these
observations:

It is strange that we have so few men Of genius
on our faculties; we are always trying to get them.
Of course, they must have undergone the regular
academic training (say ten years in graduate study
and subordinate positions) and be gentlemanly
dependable, pleasant to live with, and not apt to
make trouble by urging eccentric ideas. . . .
Institutions and genius are in the nature of things
antithetical, and if a man of genius is found living
contentedly in a university, it is peculiarly
creditable to both. As a rule professors, like
successful lawyers or doctors, are just hard-working
men of some talent.5

Other sociologists took up this challenge and devised
various typologies which were used to categorize professors

into understandable groups.

 

4Paul Goodman, The Community of Scholars (New York:
Vintage Books, 1962), pp. 249-250.

 

5Charles Horton Cooley, Life and the Student:
Roadside Notes on Human Nature, Society and Letters
(New York: A. A. KnOpf, 1931), p. 184.

 

54

Burton Clark developed such a typology building on
the "cosmopolitans and locals" notion of Gouldner. Clark
groups professors into four categories according to their
interests and behavior. The teacher: a professor identi-
fied primarily with his college or university, committed
to students and their liberal education; he is impatient
with researchers and believes professionalism and vocational
studies are inappropriate in a university setting. The
scholar-researcher: this cosmopolitan is not particularly
identified with his college, but is more interested in his
discipline and the pure and disinterested study of liberat-
ing arts; he is not concerned with application or practice.
The demonstrator: this professor is identified mainly
with his college and the local community, he may be part-
time at the college while pursuing his vocational
interests elsewhere; he is not committed to pure disin-
terested work or study, and is vocationally oriented. The
consultant: the professor who is neither identified with
his college nor committed to pure, disinterested study;
he is a professional man with a national reputation, he is
also primarily concerned with the application of knowledge
but on a much wider scale than the demonstrator.6

An anthropological typology will be used to

illustrate a slightly different view of the faculty role.

 

6Clark, "Faculty Culture," pp. 43-45.

55

Adelson projects the fOllOwing model for the professor

from his anthropological study of the healer. His typology
divides professors into three religious groups: the

shaman who heals with personal powers, using craft, charm
and cunning; the priest, acting as an agent of an omnipo-
tent authority; and the mystic who treats the source of

the illness.

Assuming the role Of shaman, the teacher adopts
the most narcissistic orientation, he keeps the
students' attention focused on his own demonstra-
tions of charm and skill. In some cases this type
of teacher has a strong impact on the student.

More often, once away from his spell, the student
finds his influence transient.

The teacher as priest claims his power through
his office rather than through personal endowment.
He is an agent of omnipotent authority, seeing
himself in terms of continued identity with the
agency, generally the graduate or professional
school. The teacher priest believes in stratifica-
tion of prestige and authority and in the hierarchi-
cal system that follows, emphasizing discipline,
trials and self—transformation. . . . [The student]
is encouraged to adopt this teacher as his model.
His mode of teaching is effective because he offers
his students a stake in a collective, utOpian
purpose which is associated with power, position,
money, and intellectual exclusiveness.

The third kind of teacher, the mystic healer,
finds a source of illness in the patient's person-
ality. He helps the patient (the student) realize
both his flaws and his hidden strengths and, in
this sense, he might be considered altruistic. . . .
It demands that the teacher set aside, for the
moment at least, his own desires and his own con-
cerns, . . . If the teacher's selflessness is
false, expedient or mechanical, then the teaching
at best will not come off, and at worst, may end
in damaging the student.7

 

7Brawer, Personality Characteristics, pp. 16-17.

56

These two sociological typologies are examples of
many such efforts to categorize and sort professors for
easier study. But they have the same weaknesses of most
typologies, in that no one professor fits neatly into any
one of the groups but is rather a mixture of several. In
addition, these studies quite often fail to offer any
positive examples or desirable models to work toward.
While it is possible to detect these flaws as they exist
in various professors, they fail to provide any direction
to structure a personality.

While both the literary portrayals and the socio-
logical typologies are extremely useful means Of approach-
ing the problem, something more is needed to provide the
kind of information necessary to understand the role of
the university professor. Feldman and Newcomb have
published a staggering two volume compilation of empirical
information concerning college students and faculty. They
have documented information and references concerning
research conducted through 1969, that tends to overwhelm
the reader.

Empirical information is not enough; it needs an
organizing principle to order its presentation of facts.
This study has chosen the academic profession as the
ordering principle for examining the role of the univer-
sity professor. While most authors deal with the compara-

tive professionalization of several occupations, this

57

study will consider the continued professionalization of
the already highly professionalized academic profession.
Therefore, the remainder of this chapter will confine
itself to the study of professionalism and the role of
the university professor. Professions are in a constant
state of flux and it is conceivable that an occupation
that has been traditionally considered to be highly pro-
fessionalized might so expose itself to public scorn
that it could lose some of the jperquisites accorded

the professions.

The structural and ideological distinctions made
by Becker in his description of the professions will be
briefly restated and further explored to assist in making
statements about the degree Of structural professionaliza-
tion Of the university professor. By applying the
structural criteria to the specific case of the university
professor, it will be possible to better understand why
the society has awarded the professor the status and
prestige of a professional. These structural criteria as
outlined in the previous chapter, include the following:
the first is the creation of a full-time occupation
involving the performance of an essential function, and
viewed as terminal. With the relatively recent increase
in salaries and the tightening of the job market, many
of the "moon-lighting" activities of the professor are

no longer necessary. In addition, those positions that

58

were previously part-time are now being filled with fully
competent but inexpensive full-time doctorates. The
resultant effect on the role of the professor has been

to encourage the View of the occupation as a full time
profession.. Traditionally, the society has viewed the
function of the university as it related to the creation
and dissemination of knowledge as essential to the well-
being of the society. While there are reservations and
counter trends it does not seem likely that the society
will make any major reversal in this area.

The second is the establishment of a training
school reflecting the body of knowledge associated with
the profession and usually affiliated with a university.
With essentially the universal adoption of the doctorate
as the license to practice, the university training pro-
gram is assured. However, there is considerable discussion
about a body of knowledge that is unique to the profession
of college teaching. Some argue that the unique body of
knowledge is not associated with teaching but rather with
the specific academic discipline. Often the academic
discipline is not a singular discipline but rather the
compilation of several disciplines into what results in a
uniquely new and separate discipline not like any other.
The mere fact that the new discipline is the result of a

compilation of many disciplines should not preclude its

59

being considered as a unique discipline with its own body
Of knowledge. While teaching may be the only common
denominator of the academic profession, this technical
academic disciplinary discrepancy has not prohibited
college teaching from being considered a profession by
the society.

Third is the formation of professional associations
to define the nature of the professional tasks and to
eliminate incompetent practitioners. The academic pro-
fession cannot be accused of having a lack of professional
associations. Each discipline has at least one academic
society and there are many national and local honorary
associations, as well as at least three national associa-
tions of university professors. The academic profession
has traditionally chosen to eliminate incompetents
through screening prior to entry rather than expulsion
from the profession. This has been accomplished either
by failing to certify a candidate as acceptable to practice
or by rejection through a subtle inner circle of communica-
tion regulating available faculty positions. In periods
Of scarce doctoral candidate supply, the inner circle
selection process breaks down and the gross academic
market place takes over, but in periods Of over supply of
doctoral candidates the inner circle works very effectively.
The effectiveness of these screening devices has long been

debated but a sufficient mystique has remained to convince

60

the public that an adequate job of public service is being
performed. In addition, the professional associations
were formed long after the occupation had been designated
a profession by the public.

The final structural criteria of a profession is
the formation of a code of ethics for the regulation of
both colleague relations and client-public relations.

This code of ethics is usually enforced by the professional
association and is ideally given legal support. The
academic profession has numerous written codes of ethics
which seem to be adhered to generally, therefore initiating
relatively little complaint from the public. The American
Association of University Professors has a comprehensive
code of ethics which is generally supported by members

and non-members alike. The extensive educational and

work socialization apparently has instilled a strong

sense of duty which is reflected in an adherence to a
strict code of ethics.

From the evidence presented here and in Chapter II,
it appears that the university professor has satisfied the
structural requirements of a profession; generally most
scholars, and the public consider them to be professional.
The important questions then become those of professional-
ism or the ideology of the academic profession.

The ideological aspects of the profession are

discussed by Richard Hall as attitudinal. He emphasizes

61

their importance for explaining role behavior in the
following passage.

The attitudinal attributes of professionalism
reflect the manner in which the practitioners view
their work. The assumption here is that there is
some correspondence between attitudes and behavior.
. . . If he or his occupation has met the struc-
tural prerequisites of professionalism, the
approach taken in practice becomes the important
consideration.8

Given the high structural level of professionalization
attained by the academic profession, an investigation of
the attitudinal aspects of role performance now becomes
the focus of attention.

The following attitudinal attributes of the pro-

fessional role have been enumerated by Hall.

First, the use of the professional organiza-
tion as a major reference, this involves both the
formal organization and informal colleague group-
ings as the major source of ideas and judgments
for the professional in his work.9

There are several organizations that might be

chosen for investigation as major formal and informal
reference groups. The most obvious reference group for
the scholar is the department. In his recent analysis,

Dressel underlines their importance as a major reference

group by indicating that only fifteen percent of the

8Richard H. Hall, "Professionalization and Bureau-
cratization," The American Sociological Review, XXXIII
(February, 1968), 93.

9Ibid.

62

the faculty members see themselves primarily as a member
of the university rather than the department or discipline.10

The community of scholars concept may be taken as a
statement of informal colleague grouping providing ideas
and judgments for the university professor. Much has been
written both for and against the community of scholars
concept, but it is generally considered that with the
complexity of the modern multiversities, there are at
best smaller communities within the larger academic
community.

Hall suggests that peer group interaction may
either enhance or detract from the performance of a pro-
fessional within a formal organization. These peer groups
are usually informal networks formed either within or
outside of the prescribed formalized organizational struc-
ture. Characteristics of the "inner fraternity" are often
conserving of the organization and reaction to this elite
may range from bitterness to an accommodating behavior
which may enhance chances of being accepted into the elite
group.

William Goode has stated that the more closely knit
the elite group of a professional community the more pro-

fessional the organization will appear. Brawer suggests

 

10Paul Dressel, Craig Johnson and Phillip Marcus,
The Confidence Crisis--An Analysis of University Depart-
ments (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1970).

 

 

63

that the informal colleague groupings of college teachers
often express feelings of inferiority toward other profes-
sional groups. She states that professors often picture
themselves as socially inept, lacking the social presence
of other professional groups and, therefore, are restricted
in social mobility. Whatever the case, formal and the
informal groups seem to be vital to the professional role.

Hall's second attitudinal attribute is: "A belief
in service to the public--this component includes the idea
of indispensibility of the profession and the view that
the work performed benefits both the public and the

practitioner."11

The ideology of the university is usually
given as "the serach for truth"; when stated in this
expansive sense there can be little doubt as to its value
for any society, and in general, the public supports this
notion. The implementation of this ideology creates a

much greater concern from all involved. Many of the
services taken on by the university are not their exclusive
domain, and indeed may cause conflict within the university
structure itself. Many professors question the necessity
of the myriad of functions performed by the university.

In fact, they argue, many of these functions are better

performed by various other social institutions now in

existence.

 

11Hall, "Professionalization and Bureaucratization,"

p. 93.

64

There are two major issues that should be discussed
in relation to the benefits derived from the university
for both public and practitioner. The first question asks
who should define the problems under investigation?
Should the scholar accept and work on problems defined by
the society, i.e., solve social problems, or should the
scholar define the problem for investigation irrespective
Of its social application? Kristol speaks for many when
he says,

Social problems are of a political nature not

of a scholarly nature. Social problems are not
of theoretical rectitude but practical sagacity.
This is not an academic virtue; indeed, where it
exists it can be an academic weakness. Academic
men ought not manage society.12

Other individuals have argued that the university
is a political institution, should admit it and go about
the business of solving social problems. Harold Taylor
states,

What the society needs is a university which

acts as a central community for sensitizing its
students and scholars and the community at large
tO the moral and social issues on which responsible

citizens everywhere in the world should be taking
humane action.13

 

2Irving Kristol, "What Business is a University
In?" New York Times Magazine, March 22, 1970, p. 106.

l3Harold Taylor, Students Without Teachers--The
Crisis in the University (New York: McGraw-Hill Inc.,
1969), p. 120.

 

 

 

65

Julian Foster goes even further in presenting a political
model for the university which replaces the traditional
corporate model. He believes we should recognize the
inability of scholars to view any problem objectively and
without bias and admit the political nature of the univer-
sity and try to perfect that. He argues that the political
model is pluralistic while the corporate model is hier-
archical: the principal of academic freedom has no
parallel in corporations while politics has rights,
freedoms, and due process; the university has no universal
test, such as profit making, which it must pass to survive.
He states that the corporate model leads to economic goals
with efficient means while the university goals and means
are ill-defined. The purpose of stressing the analogies
between the university and politics is to destroy the
notion that the university is non-political.l4

Another major difficulty with the academic profes-
sion is its unusual relationship with, and definition of,
the client. It is possible that the professor, by serving
many publics, could designate several clients. If a
professor receives a grant from a particular source, has
he not accepted a client as well as a definer of problems?
The professor as consultant works on specific problems

l4Julian F. 8. Foster, "A Political Model for the

University," Educational Record, XLIX (Fall, 1968), 435-
443. ,

 

66

designated by specific clients. Extension specialists
often work for clients which other professors would not
recognize, i.e., farmers, housewives and 4-H children.
Post-doctoral researchers would probably not select any
of the above groups, but rather choose his immediate
superior or his colleagues as clients and direct his
efforts at satisfying their requirements. Even the
student is not the obvious client of the teacher. In
professional areas the college student may be only an
intermediary when there is an ultimate recipient of a
public service, i.e., the medical patient, the legal
defendent or the public school child. This complicated
network of professional-client relationships has important
implications for Hall's next attitudinal attribute. This
is stated as:
Belief in self regulation--this involves the

belief that the person best qualified to judge

the work of a professional is a fellow profes-

sional, and the view that such a practice is

desirable and practical. It is a belief in

colleague control.15

The belief in colleague control must include

admission to the program, quality control while in the
occupation, licensure upon graduation, and insurance of
due process upon rejection from the occupation. The Ph.D.

has been accepted as the means of admission to the univer-

sity prOfessorate, but this standard has not always been

 

15Hall, "Professionalization and Bureaucratiza-
tion," p. 93.

67

consistent in quality. With the projected over supply of
doctorates for the next decade the standard of quality
will undoubtedly change once again.

If there is to be quality control within an occupa-
tion there must be goals and evaluation of the members'
relative progress toward reaching those goals. One method
developed for assessing the quality of the professor's
performance is peer evaluation. Peer evaluation has been
praised by some as the most professional means of evalua-
tion, and certainly preferable to administrative or
student evaluation. Faculty members have fought long and
hard to overcome the authoritarian rule of the administra-
tion as it existed in the early American colleges, and
have gained significant faculty power. Student participa—
tion is encouraged on most matters with the exception of
the faculty promotion and tenure committee where at best
they may serve to advise in a perfunctory way. It is
fallacious, however, to think that students don't exercise
choice among faculty members. The rating of faculty by
students has progressed to such a science that published
descriptions of course and instructor are often sold at
bookstores or published in the local underground paper.
The impact of such loss of autonomy could be devastating

to a professional image.

68

One critic sees peer evaluation as "a formal
ritual cannibalism which no other profession has inflicted
upon itself, and the means by which a professional face
can be put on an activity which is purely businesslike

and bureaucratic."16

He goes on to provide collective
bargaining as a means to avoid the competitiveness of peer
evaluation and protect the profession from the threat of a
business oriented society. Given the bigness of the
various bargaining agents in the society he sees the only
hope for survival the establishment of an equally big
union with collective bargaining power. If this labor-
management paradigm is established, it seems logical that
one of the first items to be bargained for will be the
tenure protection of professors. Another consideration
may be the bargaining power of student unions should they
arise. The professionalism of faculty members would then
be threatened on two counts; student rather than peer
evaluation and the elimination of tenure with its contin-
gencies of administrative evaluation and academic freedom.
In addition, the pressure of a surplus of young faculty
members may encourage them to join unions to insure job

security forcing the older faculty members to retire at a

younger age. It is obvious that the question of colleague

 

16John C. Livingston, "Collective Bargaining and
Professionalism in Higher Education," Educational Record,
XLVIII (Winter, 1967), 82.

69

control is very complex and has important implications for
the continued professionalization of the university pro-
fessor.

The fourth attitudinal attribute listed by Hall is
"A sense of calling to the field--this reflects the dedica-
tion of the professional to his work and the feeling that
he would probably want to do the work even if fewer

O I O 17
extr1n31c rewards were available."

Historically this
has been the rationale provided by underpaid professors.
They felt a sense of obligation to the scholarly pursuit
of truth in a friendly atmosphere apart from the troubled
world. There are those that still see the "ivory tower"
notion as the only alternative for a viable higher educa-
tional system. Thompson and Kelly stated that the pro-
fessional commitment for the university is the objective
and scholarly inquiry into truth and the instruction that
follows from this inquiry. A college is without a heart

18 In their view, if the

or soul but not without a mind.
university becomes more political there will be no place
in the entire society for the objective inquiry of dis-

interested scholars.

 

17Hall, "Professionalization and Bureaucratiza-
tion," p. 93.

18Ralph Thompson and Samuel Kelly, "The Case for
the Ivory Tower," Educational Review, L (Winter, 1969),
89-94.

70

The sense of calling to a profession indicates a
special social Obligation which can't share its position
with profit. Society awards stature and prestige to the
professional and receives in return a sense of public
service. The professional must have a sense of altruism
and its incompatability with the profit motive is classical.
The discrepancy between a sense of calling and performing
for pecuniary gains has been discussed by many authors.
Laski makes a strong bid for the complete unfettered
public support of scholarship in the following passage.

Their purposes cannot be fulfilled so long

as their members are dependent upon the hazards

of a commercial market. It is notable that in

each of them the best work is done, the highest

public Spirit displayed by those of their members 9

from whom the Virus of insecurity has been removed.
This plea for untainted and adequate wages has been the
basis for most of the unionization activities of university
faculties. The public reaction to higher faculty wages
has been a demand for increased faculty output referred to
as accountability. This economic view of the labor-
management model will continue to precipitate confronta-
tions of large interest groups seeking further power.

Many of the younger faculty have been socialized

in a system that has been based on a sense of calling.

When they assume their position in the organizational

 

19Harold J. Laski, "The Decline of the Professions,"

Harper's Magazine, CLXXI‘ (November, 1935), 682.

71

structure they find a role conflict between what they
expected and what actually exists. What they find is a
more tightly structured organization moving toward con-
trols and away from academic freedom. The resolution of
this conflict may take the form of a professional con-
frontation.

The final attitudinal attribute listed by Hall is
also structural and is the key to the understanding of the
professional: "Autonomy--this involves the feeling that
the practitioner ought to be able to make his own decisions
without external pressures from clients, those who are not
members of his profession, or from his employing organiza-
tion."20 The structural aspects of autonomy include
those generally associated with professional organizations.
These organizations protect a professional's autonomy by
excluding unqualified persons from entering the profession,
and by restricting evaluation to professional colleagues.

The much debated aspect of professional autonomy
as it is affected by the imposition of the bureaucratic
structure has been discussed elsewhere, but will be
strengthened here by the arguments of two eminent
researchers. Everett Hughes sees professionals operating
in bureaucratic structures better able to become more

specialized because they don't have to perform all the

 

20Hall, "Professionalization and Bureaucratiza-
p. 93.

tion,‘

72

functions of persons practicing privately.21 Barber states
that it is a myth that professionals can't operate in a
bureaucracy. He suggests differential staffing with
"professional-administrators" judging and directing other
professionals as an alternative solution to the
professional-bureaucratic dilemma.22 Barber's suggestion
has importance for the university setting because pro-
fessors obviously work in a relatively highly structured
bureaucracy, often under the supervision of persons not
trained in their discipline. It is becoming more prevalent
for central administration personnel to be specialists in
administration, and even though they might have been
trained in a discipline, their allegiance is elsewhere.

The attitudinal aspects of autonomy deal primarily
with the belief that the professional should be free to
exercise his own judgment in decision making. There are
various members outside of the university that might
infringe on the professor's ability to make decisions,
these have been enumerated under the listing of clients.

In examining the two aspects of autonomy more

closely, Hall states that

 

21Everett C. Hughes, "Professions," Daedalus,
XCII (Fall, 1963), 655-668.

22Bernard Barber, "Some Problems in the Sociology
of the Professions," Daedalus, XCII (Fall, 1963), 680.

73

. . . the combination of the structural and the
attitudinal aspects serve as a basis for the
professional model. It is generally assumed that
both aspects are present to a great degree in
highly professionalized occupations, while they
are present to a lesser degree in the less pro-
fessionalized occupations.

He then adds this important qualification:

. . . Occupations which are attempting to become
professions may be able to instill in their
membership strong professional attitudes, while
the more established professions may contain less
idealistic members. . . . The established profes-
sions such as medicine or law appear to fit the
professional model in most ways, although atti-
tudinal attributes may or may not adhere to this
pattern.23

This work on professionalization and bureaucratiza-
tion has several implications for the future of the role

of the university professor.

Among the major findings of this research is
the fact that the structural and attitudinal
aspects of professionalization do not necessarily
vary together. Some 'established' professions
have rather weakly develOped professional atti-
tudes, while some of the less professionalized
groups have very strong attitudes in this regard.
The strength of these attitudes appears to be
based on the kind of socialization which has
taken place both in the profession's training
program and in the work itself.24

This being the case, it is also conceivable that an occupa-
tion maintaining a structurally sound professional facade

may be declining attitudinally.

 

23Hall, "Professionalization and Bureaucratiza-
tion’" Po 930 '

24Ibid., p..103.

74

Hall found another social factor operating. He
believes that a profession that receives relatively few
material rewards is more likely to exhibit a higher level
of dedication. In addition, if an occupation has experi-
enced a high level of self regulation, it will believe
strongly that it is a desirable attitude and fight to
retain this position. It appears that changes in the
structure of a profession will bring about corresponding
attitudinal adjustments in that profession.

According to Hall's findings there are certain
attitudinal indicators that are much more meaningful
predictors of professionalism than others. The use of
professional organization as a major reference, the
belief in self-regulation, and the degree of autonomy
are central professional indicators. The other two
attitudinal indicators, belief in service to the public
and a sense of calling to the field, he finds, have little
relevance to the professional's ideological beliefs. It
is interesting to note that the strongest indicators of
professionalism are the ones that are in the greatest
state of flux currently in the academic profession.

The second major implication of Hall's research
illustrates the importance of public acceptance of the
occupation as a profession. A combination of performance

and public relations unite to foster the public acceptance

75

necessary to be considered a profession. The society is
questioning all professions at this time, and the univer-
sity professor has not escaped this scrutiny. Many
critical articles and books have questioned the performance
of the university.‘ Public investigations of government
sponsored university programs have cast doubt on the
integrity of the institution and state legislatures have
clamored for an accounting of funds, and a reconsideration
of the universities autonomous position. Universities
have never been particularly good at public relations

and never tried very hard until the financial picture
darkened and they were forced to rely on alumni for funds.
University public relations suffered a severe setback in
the Spring of 1970 as the result of a student strike which
was the culmination of two years of unrest and dissatis-
faction with the academic institutions. The repercussions
of that event are still being felt in many states.

The third major finding of Hall's research concerns
the intra-occupational variation. "Even among the estab-
lished professions, members vary in their conformity to
the professional model in both the structural and atti-
tudinal attributes."25 These variations are based on
three factors: first is the way the general social struc-

ture expresses its needs by giving or refusing legal and

 

.ZSIbid., p. 94.

76

behavioral sanctions for performance of functions. 'Second
lies within the organization and deals with the competi-
tion and divisiveness of standards for entrance and
regulative norms in the multiple diviSions within the
organization. And the third is the degree to which the
work situation allows the profession to be self regulative
and autonomous.

Social sanctions and performance standards are cur-
rently being redefined and it remains to be seen how this
will be reflected in the future performance of the
university. The university has been described as a holding
company for professions and this description accurately
illustrates the wide diversity which exists among the
various disciplines. Disciplines seem to vary generally
as a group, due largely to their socialization patterns
but variance among disciplines may be great, creating an
extremely heterogeneous profession. The university has
also been characterized as a community of scholars
indicating the general conformity to professional norms
which exist across disciplines. As indicated previously,
individual role variation within these broad professional
norm descriptions is great. But there are some general
identifying characteristics that help to identify all

university professors.

77

Clearly all college teachers work within a
bureaucratized work setting. However, the degree of
bureaucratization may be quite varied at different sized
colleges, in different departments within the college and
among the academic ranks. One of the distinguishing
characteristics of a bureaucracy is its division of labor.
The several roles played by department chairmen, research-
scholars and instructors vary greatly in their degree of
autonomy, assignment of administrative tasks and teaching
duties. The norms governing the behavior in these academic
ranks may be in conflict with one another and in conflict
with the individual's perceived role. So, conflicts
result not merely from the reaction against loss of
autonomy to the organization of the work setting, but
also to conflicts within the various work levels.

The individual socialized as a professional but
working in a bureaucratic setting may have an internalized
set of rules that conflict with the bureaucratically
imposed set of rules. The professor may resist bureau-
cratic standards, i.e., refuse to give grades because he
believes they inhibit learning. The professional may
resist bureaucratic supervision especially when the super-
visor has no expertise in the professional's discipline,
i.e., the professor's refusal to be "visited" for the

purposes of teacher evaluation. The professional may have

\ /

78

only conditional loyalty to the bureaucracy, i.e., the
university professor who has his primary loyalty to his
discipline and sees the university merely as a place of
employment. These role conflicts appear because of the
professional ideology that places the professional in an
autonomous work setting. It must be remembered that most
professors have always worked in a bureaucratic structure
and the trend is toward increased bureaucracy. As
illustrated elsewhere, the threat to professional autonomy
exists regardless of the work setting, be it bureaucracy
or private practice.

In a complex social institution such as the univer-
sity the importation of professional standards resulting
from numerous socialization schemes may be a very real
source of role conflict. It is unlikely that such a
complex organization will have established organizational
standards that will correspond to the great variety of
professional standards being imported.

From the evidence presented here, it would appear
that professional autonomy may be adversely affected by
bureaucratization, and for a profession to exist within
a bureaucracy many of these conflicting organizational
concepts and role concepts must reach some kind of
equilibrium. Changes in any of these features will destroy
the equilibrium and cause resultant changes in the bureau-

cratic structure or adjustments in professionalism. The

79

key question to be discussed in the remainder of this
study is whether the academic profession and the society
can adjust quickly enough in this period of rapid transi-
tion to preserve the professionalism of the university
professor.

Of the various approaches to explaining the role
of the university professor outlined in this chapter, the
most acceptable one seems to be the approach taken by
Richard Hall in his examination Of the various levels of
professionalization of different occupations. The quasi-
fictional accounts tend to build public stereotypes and
the sociological typologies lend support to these claims.
The empirical approach to sociological analysis builds
on both of these, and tries to support or reject notions
on the basis of some publicly verifiable scientific
statements. Hall seems to have provided an approach and
some structural means of looking at continued profession-
alization within the academic profession. His research
findings emphasize that ideological turmoil may exist
even within the "established professions" such as college

teaching.

CHAPTER IV

HISTORY PRIOR TO WORLD WAR II

A History of the Academic Profession

There exists an interesting, though academic,
discussion about the origin of the academic profession.
Alfred North Whitehead believes the origins of the various
professions are to be found in the academies fostered by
the teachings of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, while
others see no recognizable beginnings prior to the
medieval times. Those who choose the Greco-Roman Period
summon such examples as the lawyer and physician and point
to Plato's Republic as an example of an extremely strati-
fied society with various public services performed by
selected civil servants. Carr-Saunders and Wilson reject
this notion stating that the lawyers were generally merely
a friend asked to plead a plaintiff's case rather than a
specialist trained in law, and the physicians were merely
pupils of non-professional practitioners. To strengthen
the argument they note that teachers and Roman physicians

were often slaves.

Origin: The Middle Ages
Those who choose the medieval times as the origin
of the professions have the stronger argument and

80

81

definitely the most support. Norman K. Henderson states

flatly that:

Universities originated in the Middle Ages
when scholar-teachers of great repute gathered
around themselves a steadily increasing number
of students. Other able teachers, taking advan-
tage of these student groups set up their 'chairs'
nearby, and thus when more teachers and students
came, what was called a 'studium generale' was
created.

Cogan is equally emphatic in choosing sides: "Whatever
the merits of the argument for a pre-Christian origin of
profession, there can be little doubt that genuine ante-
cedents were to be found in eleventh century Europe."2
It is not merely coincidental that the professions and the
universities developed simultaneously during the Middle
Ages. The universities provided the theoretical portion
of the professional training and often served as certify-
ing agencies for the developing professions.
The rise of the medieval university marked an
important advance in professional training. Here
we have a center of instruction for the first time
which was exclusively devoted to professional
education. In fact, the medieval university was
nothing if it was not an incorporation of profes-
sional faculties. But even more important is the
fact that here the classical relation of master

and apprentice inclines to the newer one of
professor and student.3

 

lNorman K. Henderson, University Teaching (Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1969), p. 1.

Morris L. Cogan, "Toward a Definition of Profession, "
Harvard Educational Review, XXIII, No. 1 (1953), 34.

3John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Educa-
tton in Transition: A History of American Colleges and
Universities, 1636-1956 (New York: Harper and Brothers,
1958). PP. 50-51.

 

82

The medieval society sought to have services performed by
certified professionals and the universities were estab-
lished to perform this certifying function.
The award of degrees in the professional schools

of the medieval university was jealously guarded

because the award carried with it the license to

practice. . . . Professors were just as anxious as

any of the other medieval guilds that their ranks

be recruited only from those who satisfied them of

their command of professional knowledge. It is

notable at this point that the professors had an

autonomous control not only over the training of 4

future professionals but of licensing them as well.
Even during the very early beginnings the professions were
intimately tied to the university, each adding impetus to
the other, as they interacted with the society. This
symbiotic relationship had progressed to such an extent during
the Middle Ages that Wilensky was able to state that:
"Established solidly since the late Middle Ages have been
law, the clergy, university teaching and to some extent
medicine."5

It is interesting to note that two of the early

models of the university developed in Paris and Bologna.
In Paris there was a corporation of teachers which accepted
students and in Bologna there was a corporation of students
which employed and paid its teachers. As this was eventually

transferred to England, the teachers and students formed

exclusive societies for the housing of professional

 

4Ibid., pp. 51-52.

5Wilensky, "Professionalization of Everyone?"
p. 141.

83

practitioners under the domination of the church. At this
juncture there was little question about which model would
be adopted.

So it would seem that even though the roots Of the
professions might reach back to ancient times the impor-
tant developments for the professions and the university
came during the Middle Ages. Harris makes a cogent
summary of this position.

Universities and society have traditionally
had a close relationship to each other. Univer—
sities in their present form can trace their
origins to the Middle Ages and medieval univer-
sities were institutions of Operational utility.
In fact, they were primarily professional schools.
The University of Salerno arose in the eleventh
century as a medical school. The greatest univer-
sity of Southern EurOpe, Bologna, emerged in the
twelfth century as a school of civil law. Paris,
the pattern for universities in Northern Europe,
trained theologians and scholars for the church.
Doctors, lawyers, and theologians all held very
practical positions in the society Of the Middle
Ages, and the universities existed to train these
leaders.6

From its very beginnings, the university and its
faculty adopted certain Operational patterns directly from
their interaction with the professions. They adopted such
characteristics as a superior-subordinate professor-
student relationship, control over recruiting, licensing
and expulsion of members, and the general autonomous

functioning Of the professions. The central notion of the

k

6Michael R. Harris, Five Counterrevolutionists in
Higher Education (Corvallis: Oregon UniverSity Press,
1970), pp. 23-24.

 

 

84

professions has always been public service in an altruis-
tic fashion. The university professorate serving as
training and certifying agent for the professions adopted
this stance, and therefore was accorded professional
status by the public. In viewing these compatable origins
of the professions and the university professor it is
easier to understand how the professorate gained the title
of professional while still exhibiting many discrepancies
with the ideal professional model.

There is one further clarification of terminology
necessary before reviewing the academic profession in
America. The word university has been used in reference
to the social institutions of the Middle Ages, and will
again be used in the following section to indicate the
German influence on the American college. These two
usages of the same term are widely accepted in the
literature and seem to cause little confusion.

Universities, as used when referring to the Middle
Ages, have their origins in those places where lectures
and discussions were open to anyone. These places were
called "studia publica" or "studia generalia" which was
later changed to the Roman word "universitas" meaning
"corporation." This term accurately reflected the coming
together of groups of students or teachers in a more

formalized teaching and learning relationship.

85

The second use of the term university has reference
to the influence of the German scientific and research
orientation on the American college of the middle and late
nineteenth century. Prior to 1850, the "universities" in
America had a variety of meanings and descriptions but
with the mass training of American scholars in Germany
(over 8,000 between 1850 and 1900) the American university
took on a distinctly German character and indicated a more
specific academic institution. Among the many contribu-
tions of the German university were the conception of a
university as a research institution, the German philosophy
of idealism, the notion of "Wissenschaft" signifying a
dedicated and sanctified pursuit of science, and the idea
of the student learning side by side with the teacher
rather than listening to the exposition of classical texts.

The tremendous impact of the German university
presupposed a certain receptiveness from the American
society which was not obvious prior to this time. Metzger,
in explaining the German influence on the American college
and society states:

The emergence of the university coincided with

the growth of industrialism, urbanism, agricultural
commercialism, and corporate enterprise. Dynamic
and growing, the machine society needed technical
skill to run it, scientific knowledge to improve it,

managerial experience to organize it, engineering
competence to give it cost advantages.7

 

7Walter P. Metzger, Academic Freedom in the A e of
the University (New York: Columbia University Press, 95 ),
p. 106.

86

This provides an excellent example of the impact of social
forces on the function of the university and the role of
the university professor.

It is quite obvious that the European higher educa-
tion system has played an extremely important role in
molding and shaping the American university as it exists
today. While the American society practiced selective
acceptance of the educational ideas, there is little
reason to believe that they did not import the social
ideas and beliefs that had long established the university
professor as a professional. Good states, "Societies at
similar stages of industrialization may grant roughly
equivalent prestige ranking to the same occupation, such
as lawyer, physician or university professor."8 SO it
seems fair to assume that as the university professorate
was imported and modified by the American society it
retained a relatively high level of professionalization.

There is general agreement among scholars that the
university professor has been and still is a highly pro-
fessionalized figure in American society. This being the
case, questions about further professionalization of an
occupation already considered to be highly professionalized

revolve about the ideology of a profession rather than the

 

8William J. Goode, "Encroachment, Charlatanism,
and the Emerging Profession: Psychology, Sociology and
Medicine," American Sociological Review, XXV (December,
1960), p. 902.

 

87

steps toward professionalization. Major concerns arise

when there is some threat to the professional position or
when the professional role description no longer fits the
actual role as it is performed. There have been several

periods of time in American history when the professional
position of the university professor has been challenged.
By briefly recalling these historical periods, the impact
of the social forces will be illustrated and the ideology

of the academic profession will be explored.

The Colonial College

 

Prior to the American Revolution there were nine
colleges established in the English colonies. Rudolph
claims that they were not merely copies of the Ox-bridge
model but were adapted to the needs of the developing
society. It seems obvious that there was a heavy reliance
on the European scholars who had been imported to act as
faculty for those early colleges.

In 1776 there were 3,000 living graduates of
the American colleges. The college had long been
a necessity for society, but it had not become a
necessity for the people. The college was clearly
a source of political leaders, but not everyone
aspired to be a leader. The college sustained a
literate, indeed a learned ministry, but many
Americans could get along without any ministry at
all, for most colonial Americans, college was
something that could wait.9

 

9Frederick Rudolph, The American College and
University; A History (New York: Vintage Books, 1962),

J

p. 22.

 

88

The colleges of the colonial period were relatively
insignificant in their impact on what was to eventually
become the American university.

In early nineteenth-century America, no
university as such existed. The American literary
college characterized American higher education
before the Civil War. It did not relate to the
operational needs of society. It was able to
supply neither the personnel nor the knowledge
needed to solve the operational problems of a
dynamic industrial country. Instead of relating
closely to its environment, it held to one over-
riding purpose: the disciplining of the student's
mind. While doing this, those in charge of
collegiate policy expected they would also pro-
duce Christian gentlemen with a common educa-
tional experience.10

The function of higher education was narrowly conceived by
these educational planners and they were to be overrun in
the transformation that followed the Civil War. The role
of the professor during this period was to build character
in the young men of the colonial and post-Revolutionary
War elite, by example, through traditional lecturing and
classical literature. This was a professionally simple
task without the complicating factors that were soon to
arise.
Jencksiand Riesman have little good to say about
the American colleges prior to the Civil War period.
During the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early
nineteenth centuries American colleges were con-
ceived and operated as pillars of the locally

established church, political order, and social
conventions. These local arrangements were

oHarris, Five Counterrevolutionists, p. 26.

 

89

relatively stable, widely accepted as legitimate,
and comparatively well integrated with one
another. . . . An American college was in some
respects more like today's secondary schools than
today's universities. . . . With the wisdom of
hindsight it is tempting to conclude that these
colleges influenced neither the intellectual nor
the social history of their era. Perhaps the
resources devoted to colleges might have been
better allocated to libraries, scientific
societies, or primary schooling.ll

The Civil War Period

 

In the second quarter of the nineteenth century
some sweeping changes were taking place in the American
society that were to be reflected in the institutions of
higher education. A national government was forming, the
state churches were struck down, new lands were opening
up and the established institutions were under attack.

The election of Andrew Jackson was a symbol Of this
changing atmosphere and the higher education institutions,
under the pressure of declining enrollments, were
encouraged to become more involved in the awakening of
the industrial society.

During this period the first science and engineer-
ing courses were introduced in 1828 and many others
shortly followed. The influence of the German university
ideals were being introduced. But it was not until after

the Civil War that these changes were to provide the

 

11Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, The
Academic Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books,
1g69y' Pp. 1-2.

 

90

impetus for what was to be the American university. Johns
Hopkins, in 1876, became the first institution committed

to graduate instruction and research. In 1862, Abraham
Lincoln signed the Land-Grant College Act which gave formal
recognition to the use of higher education for the direct
operational utility of the society. SO began the irre-
versible trend of the American university. NO longer
would the literary colleges be devoted only to general
education which bore no direct relationship to the prob-
lems of the American society.

In the new colleges and universities the

nature of general education itself changed and

two new basic varieties of education entered:

that concerned with vocational technique and

that concerned with the expansion of the

boundaries of man's basic knowledge.1
The research and service notions thus established, were to
begin a cumulative action which would eventually overtake
the teaching and character building functions of the
early university and nearly supplant them.

Once again the interplay of the society and the
university is demonstrated. The society demands, the
university complies, and the professor acquiesces. The
changes in the role of the professor were extremely

important. The character-building function was greatly

diminished in this realignment of priorities. The

 

12Harris, Five Counterrevolutionists, p. 31.

 

91

professor could no longer devote all of his time to
teaching. A new role was being defined including teaching,
research and public service. Even the teaching methods
were undergoing change, with a new emphasis on practical
and applied research some scientific equipment was making
its way into the college labs. For the first time in
American history the society had penetrated the walls of
the colleges and the interaction had provided many signifi-
cant changes for the college and the professor.

Jencks and Riesman cite this period of the rise of
the university as an extremely important phase in the
development of higher education in the United States.

Changes in the character of the American
society have inevitably been accompanied by
changes in higher education. The most basic of
these changes has been the rise of the university.
This has had many consequences. College instruc-
tors have become less and less preoccupied with
educating young people, more and more preoccupied
with educating one another by doing scholarly
research which advances their discipline. The
result is that higher education has ceased to be
a marginal backward-looking enterprise shunned
by the bulk of the citizenry.13

The gradual rise of the university during this period
was not to have its full impact until the beginning of
the twentieth century.

The first PhD was awarded in 1861 by Yale.
Cornell opened in 1868 with Andrew White as presi-

dent. Charles Eliot was inaugurated as president
of Harvard in 1869. Yet it was not until the

 

13Jencks and Riesman, The Academic Revolution,

p. 12.

92

1880's that anything like a modern university
really took shape in America. Perhaps the most
important breakthroughs were the founding of
Johns Hopkins and Clark as primarily graduate
universities. Eliot's success in instituting

the elective system at Harvard was also important,
both in its own right and because it facilitated
the assemblage of a more scholarly and specialized
faculty. The 1890's saw further progress, with‘
the founding of Chicago, the reform of Columbia,
and the tentative acceptance of graduate work

as an important activity in the leading state
universities. This was also the period when
knowledge was broken up into its present depart-
mental categories, with the department emerging
as the basic unit of academic administration.l4

Critics of the Turn of the Century

 

The beginning of the twentieth century saw struggle
and change shape the future Of the university. The
dynamic institution that had developed in the late eighteen
hundreds experienced several power struggles and counter
trends but failed to vary from its course toward more
social involvement and mass education. Many of the
critics indicated that the university was too much
influenced by the social forces. Thorstein Veblen was
among those who saw the university tied too closely to
the society.
Higher learning of the modern world . . . has
grown and shifted in point of content, aims and
methods in response to the changes in habits of

life that have passed over the Western peOples 15
during the period of its growth and ascendancy.

 

14Ibid., p. 13.

5Harris, Five Counterrevolutionists, p. 19.

 

93

Veblen was very critical of the direction of the univer-
sity and its reliance on the society.

Veblen saw this period of the late eighteen
hundreds as crucial to the development of the American
university. "It is from this period--from the era Of
the Civil War and the Reconstruction--that the changes
set in which have reshaped the academic situation in
America."16 Writing in 1918, he suggested that the
university should be "given over to the disinterested
instruction, not specialized with a vocational or even a
denominational, bias."l7 He further attacked all pro-
fessional education in the university. Brubacher says of
Veblen,

Thorstein Veblen took the radical stand that
scholarly training in the university should be
thoroughly purged of any professional influences.
Research must be quite Objective, which it cannot
be if it tries to serve professional ends as well.
The lawyer or doctor ultimately is interested in
a particular client or particular patient. This
interest in the individual and the unique warps
generalization.18

This recurrent theme of working for the welfare of the

client rather than the good of the society continues to

plague the existence of the university professor and the

 

16Thorstein Veblen, Higher Learning in America
(Palo Alto: Academic Reprints, 1954), p. 22.

l7Ibid.

18Brubacher and Rudy, Higher Education in Transi-

tion, p. 67.

 

 

 

94

position taken by Veblen in 1918 has become a crucial
issue for the survival of the university of the seventies.

Veblen's claims were supported by empirical
evidence amassed by Abraham Flexner in his Carnegie
Corporation study of medical education in the United
States and Canada. The findings of the 1910 report
showed medical education to be carried on in antiquated
and unsanitary hospitals where unscrupulous physicians
were ignoring the public welfare and teaching solely for
profit. Students who had not even graduated from high
school could readily be admitted to a medical school,
graduate and practice medicine without learning the
fundamentals of health care. Flexner recommended that
120 medical schools be closed.19 Following this study,
he became an authority on higher education and often
attacked the ideals and practices of higher education
because Of their short sighted ends. He saw the univer-
sities as a site for the formulation and transmission of
conceptual knowledge only.

John Dewey was also concerned about the direction
of professionalization in the society in general and
higher education specifically. In "Culture and Profes-

sionalism in Education" he writes concerning the direction

of higher education.

 

19Abraham Flexner, I Remember: The Autobiography

of Abraham Flexner (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940),
p. 113.

 

95

Hence, there is lively solicitude as to
whether our higher schools are going to surrender
to the practical and industrial spirit of the age,
until that discriminating love of thought and its
products that we call culture shall have been
buried under modes of training that prepare
students for their future vocations. 0

He goes on to tie the higher education even closer to the
social experience: "The rapid growth of professional
tendencies and aims in higher education appears then to
be the effect of the social and economic changes of the

21

last century and a half." Given these strong social

forces he was concerned that the training of the profes-
sional in the university emphasize the social function of
the profession rather than individual monetary gain.

In other words, the more the scientific spirit
of inquiry and love of thinking is introduced into
professional teaching, the surer is broad and
liberal intellectual interest and taste to be the
product. Again while professional studies have to
be conducted with ultimate application in practice
in View, this application may be to personal
success, pecuniary and competitive, or it may be
more widely social.

Dewey ends this paper with a thesis quite similar to
Veblen and Flexner but with some important moderations.
He suggests that the university promote these things:

"interest in inquiry and liberal discussion and love of

 

20John Dewey, "Culture and Professionalism in

Education," School and Society, XVIII (October, 1923),
421.

211bid., p. 422.

221bid., p. 423.

96

scientific thinking, that is of free and disinterested
thinking."23

One further persistent professional problem that
had its origin at the turn of the century is that of pro-
tection of faculty members from arbitrary dismissal by
the then all-powerful administration. The dismissal of
J. McKeen Cattell prompted him to make militant speeches
berating the professorate for its lack of political
power and public understanding.

The professor in America seems to think that

self-respect requires silence and discretion on
his part. He thinks that by nursing this gigantic
reverence for the idea of professordom, such
reverence will, somehow be extended all over
society, 'till the professor becomes a creature

of power, of public notoriety, of independent
reputation as he is in Germany. In the meantime,
the professor is trampled upon, his interests are
of no social consequence, he is kept at menial
employments and the leisure to do good work is
denied him. A change is certainly needed in all 24
of these aspects of the American professor's life.

In the midst of this conflict and controversy, an
organization was formed, by some of the very critics of
the university, to insure the professionalism of the
scholar. In 1915 the American Association of University
Professors was begun to provide several professional
functions. The AAUP developed code of ethics, which most

professions see as an essential step in professionalization.

 

23
24

Ibid., p. 424.

Wilson, The Academic Man, p. 122.

 

97

It acts as a policing agency, hearing faculty grievances
and acting to censor offending institutions. Throughout
its history, the AAUP has maintained a highly professional
stance, generally ignoring political issues and minimizing
militancy as a useful means for achieving professional
goals.

There have been many critics of the AAUP but few

as caustic as Myron Lieberman.

Although commonly regarded as both a "pro-
fessional" and an employee association, the AAUP
fulfills only a few limited functions of either
type of organization. . . . The Association
exerts no control over admission to college
teaching. It enforces no educational standards
for institutions of higher education. . . .
Politically it is doubtful that the Association
has even a nuisance value.25

He goes on to charge that it has failed to raise professor
salaries or protect them in the event of dismissal. He
believes that the AAUP has not even been able to protect
the integrity of higher education. He states that many
professors see little value in joining the Association and
instead join academic associations, thereby forfeiting
their position in either a professional or an employee
organization. As a result of the ineffectiveness of this
Association other professional organizations have forced

their way into the foreground of professional negotiations

and have gained increased support in the 1960's.

 

25Myron Liebermann, The Future of Higher Education
(Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1962), P. 199.

98

The Twenties and Thirties

 

Following this early period of formulation and
definition Of the American university, lasting from the
1850's until after 1910, there was a short period of con—
solidation and expansion. University enrollments increased
and the scientific and utilitarian ideals of the university
prevailed. In this favorable climate the university pro-
fessor also developed in his role as something more than
a teacher and builder of character. A definitive role was
developing which would exhibit a professional scholar of
many talents and persuasions.

First, the university granted its teachers the
time to engage in outside activities: . . . Secondly,
the university appointed men whose interests were
not engrossed by campus duties. It brought in the
professional scholar, whose works were appraised by
other specialists; it brought in the new-style
president, a man of wider affairs; it brought in
the technical expert, available for outside con-
sultation. Thirdly, the university professor began
to given up the quiet retreat Of moral philosophy
for the more worldly concerns of social science.
This movement was accelerated by a fourth develop-
ment, the rise of the philosophy of pragmatism
which sanctioned the application Of the trained
intelligence to the varied problems of life.26

It can readily be seen that most Of the ingredients of
the current professorate were present in this earlier,

less complicated time.

 

6Metzger, Academic Freedom in the Age Of the
University, p. 130.

 

 

99

This wave of pragmatic popularization foreshadowed
some of the professional problems that were to result from
increased philanthropy and the increased involvement in
solving social problems. Rudolph cites this example from
the 1920's:
A five-and-ten-cent-store millionaire would
endow a chair of civil rights at Lafayette College .1
and then complain that he was having difficulty '

hiring for the chair a professor prepared to sell
the donor's political and social views.27

“

Irving Babbitt led the revolt against vocationalism
and the pandering to practical societal needs. He echoed
Veblen's earlier criticism of professional education as an
expression of scientific materialism and a preoccupation
with power. Babbitt thought the universities should
sponsor research to discover new humanistic standards of
culture and did not want higher education to concern
itself with the immediate problems of society. He favored
the Platonic rule of an elite, trained in and dedicated
to high cultural standards. Another advocate of returning
to high cultural standards for the university was Albert
Jay Nock. He favored the return to the character building
function of earlier American literary colleges.

While these humanists were not able to turn the
tide of the pragmatic philosophers, they were able to
influence the professorate toward more interaction with

students. Many more students from various social classes

 

27Rudolph, The American College, p. 454.

 

100

were now attending the university and they needed addi-

' tional assistance from the faculty. Counseling of various
kinds was instituted to help the students adjust both
academically and socially to their unfamiliar surroundings.
In the twenties the students were embracing and fully
enjoying collegiate life. College was a place to become
socially mobile by meeting students from various social
classes as well as being relieved of the pressures of

home.

The university of the twenties did little to prepare
their students for the calamities that would shortly occur.
The American society had never experienced such a series
of disasters as befell them during the thirties. The
economic collapse followed by the threat of world war was
bound to have a dramatic effect on the university and its
professorate. It is during such times of stress that the
most traditional of the social institutions come under a
concentrated attack. The society looked to the recently
self-proclaimed solver of social problems for the answers,
and heard few responses.

Professors suffered on many levels during the
thirties not the least of which was the financial level.
Salaries which were already low, in some instances, became
non-existent. The protectors of democratic principles

were disillusioned by the incapacity of the political

101

system to deal with major social problems. In this
atmosphere protests and demonstrations were inevitable.
Everywhere most students were in revolt over
something or thought they were: perhaps only
compulsory chapel or compulsory military training.
Disillusioned by the nature of the post-Versailles
world, they registered their disgust in peace
demonstrations and in solemn pledges never to go
to war. They joined picket lines, they helped
to organize labor unions. In the great urban 1
centers a small number even signed up with the
Communist party.28
A lack of jobs kept many students in college, and others
went back to graduate school or to continue professional
study.

A new seriousness of purpose was seen on most
campuses and those students who had been fun-loving
collegians in the twenties were quite concerned about
such things as the Aluminum Company of America's four
million dollar endowment of Oberlin College and the
militant reaction to antimilitarists during a Communist-

29 The

inspired demonstration in the spring of 1933.
faculty encouraged a social awareness through a prolifera-
tion of courses on American culture and American studies.
Students were encouraged to pursue social problems

across disciplinary lines in order to be able to compre-
hend the scope of the social problems. Faculty saw the

need for critical generalists in a reaction to the pre-

vious production of narrow scientific specialists.

 

281bid., p. 467.

291bid.

102

This climate of change encouraged other experi-
mental programs in addition to the interdisciplinary
approach to social problems. Dewey's progressive education
ideas connecting education closer to direct social experi-
ence gained a rather wide acceptance during the thirties.

Co-educational programs were encouraged and several F
colleges for women were formed. This was a time of experi-
mentation and change.

Not all experiments concurred with Dewey's notions,
in fact, some of the most notable exceptions were begun
during this period after World War I and before WOrld War
II. Abraham Flexner, after his widely acclaimed critical
analysis of American universities in 1930, became a fore-
most spokesman for research in the university. "He feared
that concern with short-range Operational problems was
diverting talent from the pure research which in the long
run would bring the greatest return to society."30 Robert
Maynard Hutchins established at the University of Chicago
a general education program centered about abstract,
rational and metaphysical principles, which he believed
would lead to the establishment of the prOper ordering of
society. His program centering on the great books of
civilization was continued at Saint Johns College after he

left Chicago. Alexander Meiklejohn, at Wisconsin,

 

0Harris, Five Counterrevolutionists, p. 45.

103

established a program concentrating on the notion of
developing social intelligence to control the social
environment.

He differed with the advocates of operational
utility primarily because he believed that they
concentrated on immediate technical problems. He
thought that control comes through a philosophical
understanding of the broader ideological issues
facing a society.31

These were but a few of the major experimental pro-

grams that were taking place during this period. The
individual programs started by these men failed for the
most part or continued only in some minor way. The
important fact remains, however, that many experimental
ideas were tried during the twenties and thirties and the
mood of social involvement was established. The commitment
to mass education at the level of higher education was firm
and the academic man was moving toward the center of power
in the social structure.

In speaking about this period prior to World War

II, Jencks and Riesman make the following comments.

The pace of change accelerated somewhat after
WOrld War I, for the 1920's and 1930's were a
period of unprecedented growth in enrollment. By
the outbreak of World War II the majority of the
nation's college students attended institutions
staffed by academic professionals. The profession-
alization of the faculty reduced the internal
homogeneity of many special-purpose colleges.

. . . Until WOrld war II many, if not most, under-
graduates came to the old special-interest colleges

 

31Ibid., p. 46.

104

in order to kill time, get away from home, make
new friends, enjoy themselves, acquire salable
skills, and so forth. Undergraduates with such
aims were not by and large very vulnerable to
faculty pressures. . . . The spread of graduate
study altered these attitudes appreciably.32

The counter-revolutionary movements set in progress
by the American educators following the turn of the century
were extremely useful for the moderating influences they
had on the pragmatic movement of the time. The Humanists
made sure that students were not lost entirely in the
rush to science. Counseling was established, living
arrangements were planned to assist students, co-education
was encouraged and the student culture developed into a
recognizable collegiate entity. In the thirties the
students responded to a chaotic society with protests and
demonstrations against many of the existent social institu-
tions and so created a seriousness of purpose not before
exhibited.

The professor adopted all of the features during
this time period that were to characterize him up to and
including the present time. He had accepted the various
functions defined by the society; those of research,
teaching and public service. He became a professional

scholar, virtually shunning all attempts to organize and

bargain against the administration. His work situation

 

32Jenks and Riesman, The Academic Revolution,
pp. 21-23.

 

 

PM

 

105

was bureaucratic but with an amazing amount of autonomy in
the form of academic freedom.

The university had cast the mold to which it would
adhere long after the Second World War. The university
was not solely an educational institution. It gave that
role up shortly after the Civil War when it accepted the
extension service of the Land-Grant Act and the consultant
service of business and the professor as social critic.

In addition, it accepted the responsibility as solver of
social problems, which involves the funding, selection

and execution of scientific findings. In accepting all of
these functions, the university had moved a long way from
the original building of character in the young men of a
new nation.

In reviewing this brief history of the academic
profession in America it is possible to extrapolate many
of the features that shaped the role of the professor.

It is obvious that the profession borrowed very heavily
from Europe and was especially influenced by the German
university after the Civil war. It is equally obvious
that the ideas were not merely transported from Europe
to America but were selectively incorporated into the
American university, due largely to the influence of the

society.

106

The implications of this brief history are inescap-
able. Society shapes and molds the university by exerting
social pressures to the exclusion of a free will choice by
the university. Regardless of the importation of profes-
sional norms and standards, the institution so controls
the professor that even the strongest individuals have
little enduring effect on the social institution. They

seem like a small voice calling in the wilderness, with no

choice or influence.

CHAPTER V

HISTORY AND DEPROFESSIONALIZATION

SINCE WORLD WAR II

The Impact of Social Forces Since
World War II

 

From 1865tx>l945, there were periods of great
social turmoil, but the resultant fluctuations in the
academic profession were only minor gyrations compared to
the twenty-five year period following the Second World War.
The reasons for these drastic changes following WOrld War II
are many and varied and a few of them will be explored in
this section.

The academic profession since the end of the Second
World War has achieved a central position in the American
society. This achieved position has been based largely on
the meritorious service rendered by the academic profession
both during and following World War II. Our culture came
to regard the university as a scientific bastion against
the irrational forces at work in the society. In reviewing
the history of other periods of rapid expansion of the
academic profession, it is instructive to note the influence
of major social events and their resultant effects on the
student subculture of the university, which in turn has

107

108

played an important part in shaping the nature of the
university. Each period of social change resulted in an
extension of higher education to a wider range of social
strata and socioeconomic groups. The society made broader
demands on the university and sent a force of students in
to insure that these demands were met.

These students had a different set of interests
than those already attending college; they were generally
interested in a more practical and scientific kind of edu-
cation that would make them better able to cope with the
daily problems of a rapidly developing society.

Each expanded admissions policy allowed~the entrance
of a new wave of students that were previously classified as
unqualified. The reasons for disqualification were quite
similar in each case; these students were not academically
sound enough to attend college prior to the enactment of
this new policy. The results in each instance were convul-
sive changes in the university.

The Civil War marked the beginning of massive
enrollments and curricular changes both scientific and
vocational that were to shape the next century. The end of
World War I and the rise of industry again altered the
university curriculum and brought warnings of declining
academic standards and the encroachment of the business

ethic into the academic profession. The rapid increase in

109

student enrollment was once again coupled with the advent
of a new type of student. Following the Second WOrld War,
the floodgates were once again Opened allowing a third
deluge of students that had a different view of what the
university should be. The returning GI had a new set of
aspirations, demands and inputs into the university. The
fourth wave of students, with different needs, desires and
interpretations of the role of the university is occurring
in the present university setting. The beginning was the
"Open Door" policy initiated at the city universities of
New York and adopted in various forms by many universities
in the United States.

The social setting surrounding each of these student
waves is intimately related to the activities that occurred
in the universities. This study does not seek to establish
causal relationships among the variables under considera-
tion, but rather to indicate the cyclical nature of the
variables, that reoccur in the academic profession of the
American university. The relative importance of these
social factors is due to the intensity of the relationship
of the society and the university which has continued to
increase, especially during the period since the end of the

Second WOrld War.

110

The Social Climate: World War II

 

Enrollments in colleges and universities

suddenly doubled at the end of World War II as a

result of the provisions of the G.I. Bill.

Administrators were deeply involved in study and

planning to cope with the tremendous job imme-

diately ahead. The task of securing facilities

alone--quonset huts, empty army barracks, and

other surplus properties--involved many changes

in Federal laws and regulations. In addition,

recruiting and preparing additional faculty,

reshaping the curriculum, securing funds, and

other challenges were faced and dealt with by

the total academic community.1
It might be said that these students on the GI Bill were
simply an extension of the increased enrollments that had
occurred since the end of World War I, but this would be
missing the important differences that accompanied these
students. It is the contention of this study that the
influx of funded students, in the form of GI Bill holders,
freer to make discriminating choices among various models
of higher education was one factor that helped to bring
about the decline of professionalism in the American
university. Rationale were devised to make accommodating
curricular changes that would lure endowed students onto
campuses and into programs that were more vocational than
academic. This action offended the ideal professional

model on two counts: first, it placed economic interests

ahead of professional principles, and secondly, it validated

 

lG. Kerry Smith, Twenty-Five Yearstil945-l970
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., I970), p. xi.

111

the client's ability to choose among professional offerings.
Therefore, the students were an important variable in
establishing this atmosphere.

. . . The return of the veterans brought to the

campus older, more mature students, many of them

married and burdened with family obligations of

their own; they had lost time in life, had

experienced much, and were totally in earnest

about what they were doing. In fact, for such

people the tensions of college life were likely

to arise out of the competitive desire for getting

ahead.2

The pressures exerted by the rapid growth of the
community colleges during the 1930's and 1940's coupled
with the powers of selection on the part of the funded
student, caused universities to re-examine their curriculum.
The community colleges had catered to the needs of the
vocationally inclined student as well as the industrially
oriented investments. The faculty teaching at these
institutions were more concerned with teaching than research
and saw the employment of students at the end of two years
in a vocational position as a desirable goal. This was
quite a different set of assumptions than was apparent on
the university campus.
Drawn from a wider segment of the whole society
than previously, it (the student body of the 40's)

lacked the common assumptions basic to earlier
college life, was more susceptible to the influence

 

2Oscar Handlin and Mary F. Handlin, The American
College and American Culture (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970),
p. 81. I

 

112

of such external events as war and depression, and
was, therefore, more serious about its studies.
The prospects of few families were so secure, even
in the 1950's that their offspring could afford to
ignore the problems of finding a career.

This type of student, when choosing where to spend his
money, would make quite different decisions about what
constituted a college education than those students pre-
viously described in the 1930's and early 1940's. Most
college administrators and many college professors rushed
to fulfill the requests made on them by the students and
the society.

The students were not the only group exercising
preferential funding of university programs following the
Second World War. Handlin outlines the faith society
exhibited in the academic profession following its series
of successes in science, technology and influencing
government policy following World War II.

The faculties, having steadily and successfully
fought for recognition of their professional status,
brought an exhilarating sense of confidence-~even
of arrogance--to their work. . . . Moreover, pro-
fessors had been gaining in popular esteem. . . .
Practical men of affairs had run the country into a
depression; the brain trust and its successors,
consulted by government and by business, controlled
the knowledge that could save the nation. War
service confirmed that impression. The value set
upon research grew rapidly; and the foundations,

which had already begun to operate earlier in the
century increasingly supplied support that relieved

 

31bid.

113

scholars of total dependence upon the college budget,
despite some initial resistance from the universities.

Jencks and Riesman support this position and
illustrate the continuing independence of the university

professor.

These attitudes (of independent professors)
were greatly strengthened by World War II and its
aftermath. Not only in the Manhattan Project, but
in other less glamorous ones, academic scientists
helped contribute to the war effort, and for this
and other reasons a dramatic increase in federal
support for academic research ensued. . . . Unlike
previous support for universities, these federal
grants and contracts are for all practical pur—
poses given to individual scholars or groups of
scholars rather than to the institution where they
happen to work. More often than not, if a man
moves to a new institution, his federal grants are
transferred too. Not only that, but these federal
grants are made largely on the basis of individual
professional reputation and competence. Federal
agencies usually give only minimal consideration
to an institution's location, sectarian ties,
racial composition, and the like. The result has
been further to enhance the status of the academi-
cian, who is now a prime fund raiser for his
institution.5

This new found power and wealth provided great support for
a rearrangement of priorities and a revised role descrip-
tion for the scholar and a redefinition of purpose for the
university.

From these rather inauspicious beginnings in the
late forties and early fifties, it is possible to see the

writing of the society on the walls of the universities.

 

4Ibid., pp. 74-75.

5Jencks and Riesman, The Academic Revolution, p. 14.

 

simultaneously.

114

The fifties were good times for the academic profession
in terms of public faith and public support. The univer-
sities had not only met the challenge of the increased
student enrollments, but they had continued to provide
solutions to the difficult problems of society. This
societal infatuation with the university is underlined by

Jencks and Riesman:

Two factors seem to us crucial, and both are
cultural rather than strictly economic. The first
was the increasingly visible role of academic
research in shaping both technology and social
policy. Legislators, philanthropists, and publicists
were more persuaded than ever before that productive
scholars were a national asset--quite aside from
whether they taught undergraduates anything. Money
poured into the universities to support such scholars
in the same way and for some of the same reasons that
it had earlier poured into the church to support
monastic orders. The second factor was growing
public concern with the quality Of higher education
for the young. As the over-all number of B.A.'s
rose, the psychological importance of quality dif-
ferentiation within this cadre rose correspondingly.
More legislators were anxious that their state have
a first-rank public university rather than a second-
rank one, for the mere existence of the university
no longer seemed much of an achievement. Similarly,
more parents were concerned with where their
children went to college, for a degree in itself no
longer seemed unusual. Both legislators and parents
were evidently willing to pay for the slightly more
valuable certification of an academically reputable
institution.6

Contrary to the usual conception of the quiet fifties, it
can be seen that the university was growing and branching

out into many areas of the society and working in many areas

 

6Ibid., p. 114.

The student body was working with purpose

 

“s

115

and the faculty was enjoying a reign of power. The growth
and expansion of the university of the fifties was a heady
experience that was doomed to explode from its own internal

pressure. The expansion in students and faculties and the

campus construction reflected the faith of the society in
the ability of the academic scientists to solve all kinds
of problems. This enthusiasm seemed to infect the pro—
fessors who willingly tackled all problems with equal
vigor whether they had the expertise needed or not. This
unbridled faith by the public, and the inaccurate trans-
ferral of scientific knowledge was to suffer a crushing
blow in the late fifties.

In 1957, the shock of Sputnik was to have serious
reverberations and harken the end of an era. Galbraith,
commenting on the effect of the Sputnik on the university

said: "It was less the blow than the fragility of what

it struck that caused the attention and created the alarm.

The society began losing faith in the university because

it had failed in the very area that it professed expertise.

Once the system was exposed several other deficiencies were

located which led to the turmoil of the 1960's.

7J. K. Galbraith, "Social Balance: 1959," in

Twenty-Five Years, 1945-1970, ed. by G. Kerry Smith
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 1970), p. 88.

 

7

116

The Social Climate of the 1960's

 

It scarcely seems possible that such terms as the

"multiversity" and the "military-industrial-educational

complex" could have been coined less than ten years ago

and that they could have carried such truth and impact.

Speaking about the turmoil in the 1960's and their back-

ground in the 1950's, Handlin says:

The trends toward change were already in
existence however little attention they attracted.
The massive infusion of federal funds into higher
education after Sputnik had precedents, although
it thereafter Operated on a larger scale than
before. Enrollments more than doubled between
1960 and 1969, rising to over 7 million in the
latter year, responding to the rise of birth
rate two decades earlier, and to the weak position
of youth in the labor market and society, and to
the effects of prosperity and federal aid upon
the income constraints which had formerly blocked
access to college. The subsequent strain upon a
curriculum already in flux and upon student life
already fragmented and disoriented was early
evident.8

This massive federal support is illustrated by Rudolph:

During the years after 1957, 25 percent of the
cost of construction on the American campus was
paid for with funds borrowed from Washington. By
1960, 20 percent of the operating income of the
colleges and universities was being provided by
federal funds. Indeed, university research became
a major enterprise of the federal government,
which now bought (and therefore paid for) 70
percent of all university research.9

 

8Handlin, The American College and American Culture,

84.

9Rudolph, The American College, p. 490.

117

These social factors represented a strain on the
professor as well as the student and the outcome was quite
unforeseen.

No one could have dreamed, in the first decade
following World War II, what the new breed of
students in the Sixties would be like--and how it
was that conflicts were no longer to be a private
matter between a recalcitrant, ill-tempered
student, barely more than a child, and an all-
knowing and all-powerful parent-surrogate dean
or faculty member.10

The students of the 1960's were on campus for several
reasons: educational, social and ideological. They had
affluence, leisure time and a cause that could be forwarded
through some eloquent, or at least popular, speakers.

The issues of interest to students in the sixties were
primarily issues of social conscience that were the social
problems of the society.

By the late Sixties, the universities of the
nation were carrying out with great efficiency the
tasks demanded of them by American industry, by
the government bureaus, and by the war machine.

It is ironic that during the very years those tasks
were being performed so well, American higher
education should have been so heavily criticized
for its "irrelevance." Thus began a series of
conflicts of interest that marked the period of
disenchantment.ll

 

loJoseph Axelrod and Mervin B. Freedman, "Prologue:

Twenty-Five Years: 1945-1970," in Twegty-Five Years,
1945-1970, ed. by G. Kerry Smith (San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass Inc., 1970), p. 5.

11

 

 

Ibid., ‘Po 8.

118

For the students, this sense Of disenchantment began back
in the Civil Rights movements Of the 1950's and even the
alternative life styles Of the "beat generation," up
through the campus protests and the national protests
culminating in the student strike Of the Spring Of 1970.
The disenchantment Of the faculty began in the McCarthy
hearings of the 1950's with the loyalty oath purges and
the exposure Of university support of various counter
insurgency plans through the student strike of 1970 and
into the throes Of unionism Of the 1970's.

Since the end Of World War II we have witnessed
considerable erosion of morality on the part of
faculty members and administrators. To come extent
this has resulted from involvement in various kinds
of programs and activities--for example, research
for agencies of the federal government--that have
little relationship, in some cases no relationship,
to the kinds of things an institution of higher
education should stand for. When a role shifts in
a bureaucracy and people take on roles that were
not intended within the legality of the original
system, concern for the protection of this role by
exercise of power frequently ensues. . . . We have
witnessed increasing concern with the protection
of their roles by means of exercise Of power and
abdication of the moral sense that should devolve
upon teachers when they are involved actively with
students in the process of liberal education.12

The sixties were traumatic times for both students and
faculty; the power and prestige built in the forties and
fifties seemed to crumble. This may be an illustration of

what can happen to a social institution that loses the

 

12Ibid., p. 14.

119

faith of the society and fails to take steps to correct

this situation.

The Social Climate of the 1970's

The acceleration of history makes social changes of
but a few years ago seem like massive movements of ancient
history. The latest wave of students has been the result
of yet a different set of social forces. The newest group
to be admitted to the university en masse has been the
socially disadvantaged student. This has been accomplished
through various forms of Open enrollment from the massive
acceptance programs of several city universities to the
selection of highly qualified women and certain minority
groups to fill largely token positions in elite universities.
The altruistic motives behind this movement are to equalize
the educational opportunity for some of those not usually
enrolled in college but the actual results of the programs
have not been analyzed as yet. It seems as though there
may be some unexpected dividends from the Open enrollment
program, if previous student expansion programs are any
gauge. It may be anticipated that there will be an infusion
of federal funds, an increase in the emphasis of vocational-
ism and a proliferation of programs with several curricular
changes to accommodate to the new student group.

There are, however, some important differences that

are already apparent hathis new trend. The students have

120

come to regard the university's primary function to be the
solution of social problems. Many of these students have
experienced these problems and will no longer settle for
the academic rhetoric and promises to solve them in the
future. They want action programs, now! The students

that have faith in the ability of the university want these
social problems solved more efficiently and with more
humaneness, regardless of the academic implications. Those
that reject the university may also reject the scientific
method as a means of solving any problems. These kinds of
student objections raise a larger epistomological question
which is undergoing considerable scrutiny at this time.

The university of the twentieth century has been tied very
closely to the scientific method and as stated previously
made some unwise judgments in the transferral of this
scientific knowledge into the realm of the social sciences.
The students' impatience with the ability of the scientific
method to solve complex social problems has encouraged them
to seek other ways of knowing and an extreme cultural
relativistic position along with their alternative life
styles. This lack of faith in the scientific method and
the university has seriously weakened the position of the
scholar as the purveyor of knowledge, because the question
of the proper knowledge base is being raised. In

establishing their alternative life styles they reject

121

social norms and rely on various non-scientific means for
validating truth claims, such as mysticism, divine authority
and intuition. It is very difficult for any functioning
social institution to deal with this kind of unrational
student. Students are seeking additional means of collect-
ing information and knowledge and may choose to go to

places other than a university to gain that knowledge.

Often the pattern of attendance is broken and rigid
institutional planning may be destroyed.

The faculty are also faced with quite a different
set of problems in the 1970's. As the student becomes
freer to make choices from a wider range of alternatives,
and the professor is restricted to operating in larger
institutions with a more highly developed bureaucracy, the
professional ideology is threatened. The scholar finds
only certain broad areas of problems available for research
because they are the only ones with available funding. In
the university setting, professors are working with
decreased budgets and less autonomy because of increased
student participation in decision making both in the
classroom and in the governing bodies, and increased
pressure for efficiency and accountability coming from
superiors. Because of the complexity of the society and
the depth of commitment of the university to the society

the professor has serious doubts concerning the ability to

122

perform any research that is value-free, Objective and
scientific. All of these factors are combining with the
over supply of doctoral graduates in most fields to make
the professor consider new sources of protection from the
society, his students and the administration.

The social forces Of the 1970's have become so
pervasive that the university and the professor have no

choice but to accede to the social demands.

The Decline of Academic Professionalism

The preceeding section has illustrated the acceler-
ated effects of the social forces as they have interacted
with and shaped the academic profession since the end of
the Second World War. Because Of the scope and magnitude
of this social interaction, only certain indicators of
professionalism have been selected to research and relate
to the professionalism of the university professor. This
selection has been made on the information presented in the
earlier chapters Of the study, and has relied heavily on
the research results presented by Richard Hall and Harold
Wilensky. It is the contention of this study that an
understanding Of academic professionalism, as it has
developed in the past twenty-five years, is essential to
approaching the crisis situation of the university pro-

fessorate today.

123

No one seriously surveying the academic scene

today can conclude other than that the American

university is an exceedingly precarious position.

The luster of even the most historic and distin-

guished universities is fading rapidly. For the

first time in the history of this country there

is valid reason for wondering whether the uni—

versity will survive. Alarmism may be the refuge

of the timid, but any Optimism at this time would

be little more than euphoria. The blunt and

inescapable fact is, the university in America is

in the most critical condition of its history.13

The preceeding passage emphasizes the urgency of

the situation. To better understand the steps that have
led to this crisis situation it is suggested that the vital
social forces shaping the university professorate be
examined through the further analysis of four indicators of
professionalism. The four indicators that have emerged
from the research are: designation of client, increasing
politicalization, bureaucratization and unionization.
These four can be measured, and serve to indicate the level
of professionalism of an occupation and the direction that
continued professionalization is likely to take. In
studying the particular case of the academic profession,
the most logical entry point is the designation of client.
The consequences that flow from this determination are very
closely related to the increased politicalization of the

university. The other two indicators are also closely

connected and the trend toward unionism seems to grow

 

13Nisbet, The Degradation of Academic Dogma, p. 197.

 

124

indirectly from the increased bureaucratization of the work

setting of the professor.

Four Indicators Of Professionalism:
Client Designation

 

 

In reviewing the possible client candidates for
study, one is struck by the volume of literature written
about the student revolutions around the world and the
increased student activism on the American campuses. Much
has been written about the increased awareness of college
students, especially in the political realm both on and
off campus. There is little question that students have
gained more relative power in the period of the sixties
than any of the other competing forces in the academic
scene.

The student militancy of the 1960's arose largely
from the university's role in solving social problems and
not frOm academic concerns about the university. Students
were concerned about Civil Rights, the morality of the
Viet Nam War, and the pollution of the environment, rather
than the fairness of grading systems, the honesty of
student scholarship and the more effective use of pedagogi-
cal techniques. There are, most assuredly, student con-
cerns voiced about the quality of instruction at the
college level, but any attempts to improve instruction come
within the jurisdiction of the university power structure

which must be dealt with on its own terms and not on those

125

of the students. Attempts to improve the university's
ability to solve social problems comes under the heading
of politicalization and will in only an Oblique way
increase the student's power to determine his own destiny
within the university confines.

Student efforts to become recognized have taken
three general tacks. The first has already been alluded
to as "working within the system." The hazards for student
power gained in this way are great. Those faculty and
administrative groups that have the power will not
relinquish it easily, and they have the social structure
on their side. The meritocratic American society still has
the need for certification which is accomplished primarily
through the universities. The sifting and screening of
talent, both academic and occupational, is accomplished by
the university. As long as this meritocratic hierarchy is
maintained in the society, the student remains low man in
this stratified social system and is under the constant
threat of co—optation.

The second alternative involves some kind of
"dropping out" process which is occurring more frequently
in the college student of the 1970's. The "Free Univer-
sity" movement of the late 1960's was an attempt to drop
out by establishing alternative methods of higher educa-

tion. Unfortunately, this model was merely a variation on

126

the existent university theme and encountered all of the
same difficulties of the university: lack of attendance,
poor teaching, insufficient teaching facilities and

limited funds. This movement has dissipated generally or
has been co-Opted by the higher education system. The

other student drOp out process takes various forms of
rejection of the society by the students. This may vary
from the adoption of "counter culture" appearances and
actions within the university to communal living beyond

the grasp of society, with almost all conceivable variations
in between. Those who adopt the counter-culture norms may
work within the societal structure, i.e., postman, cab
driver or bar tender, to obtain enough money to travel and
receive their education in some other more experiential

way. There is some evidence that these students may adopt
an alternating attending and leaving pattern in the higher
education system. This is a self defeating exercise because
it extends their length of stay in the social structure,

the university, and in adolescence.

None of these pretentions to student power seem to
have much influence on the designation of students as
clients by the university professor. Sociological inter-
pretations of the academic scene and empirical studies of
the professional role seldom find the student as a serious
contender for the role of client. There is, however, a

third alternative tHat may cause a reevaluation of this

127

position in the future. This is the growth of student
unions as a collective bargaining adversary in the develop-
ing parallel power structure of the future university.

If students are not currently designated as clients,
and pose no serious or immediate threat in being considered
as such, then who are the clients of the academic pro-
fessions? Wilensky makes this distinction between scientists
and professionals in their client designation:

A science, in contrast to a profession, has no
clients except, in an ultimate sense, society;

and bosses, if any, are often indeterminate. The
main public for the scientist is fellow-scientists,
who are in a position to judge competence; the main
public for the professional is clients or employer-
clients, who usually cannot judge competence.14

This seems to leave the university professor in a grey,
but mainly non-professional area. Moore explains the
difficulty in this way:

The research scientist or scholar is a limited
case. It would perhaps be more accurate to argue
that scientists and scholars, except as teachers or
advisory consultants, are much like professionals in
nearly all of the scalar or definitional criteria,
but must be considered as "professional-like" if
they genuinely lack clients "needing" their services
for the solving of problems of moment. Wilensky
would not consider them professionals, for want of
clients. It might be argued, somewhat tenuously,
that even where the research is "basic," without
apparent practical applications to human goals or
problems, the researcher's clients are in effect
his fellow specialists.15

 

14Wilensky, "Professionalization of Everyone?"

p. 141.

15Wilbert Moore, The_§rofessions: Roles and Rules
(New York: The Russell Sage Foundation, 1970), p. 8 .

128

Wilensky's research verifies these findings by placing the
professor's professionalism rating high and his client
rating low. This same research firmly establishes the
professor's colleagues as his client, with eighty percent
responding in this way and only nine percent designating
students as clients. Further support for the colleague-
client notion may be found in marks and Riseman.

College instructors have become less and
less preoccupied with educating young people,
more and more preoccupied with educating one
another by doing scholarly research which
advances their discipline.16

They further explain the separation between student and
professor in this way:

Today's scholars are still willing to monitor
the academic lives of the young, at least by proxy,
insisting that students take certain courses, pass
certain examinations, and so forth. . . . Many
professors and administrators are also less certain
than they once were as to what students ought to be
or become. . . . They want undergraduates to act
like graduate apprentices, both socially and
intellectually, and when a particular undergraduate
deviates from this norm they tend to say that he
"doesn't belong at a university." . . . They view
the faculty and its apprentices as the "heart of
the university" and the still uncommitted under-
graduates as an expendable penumbra.l7

This information lends further support to the notion that
the university professor does not see the student as his
client, but rather designates his colleagues as clients,

in a special sense Of the word.

 

lakamks and Riesman, The Academic Revolution, p. l3.

l7

 

Ibid., pp. 38-39.

129

While this finding is not unexpected, there are
certain implications that gain significant meaning when
viewing the various roles that the scholar plays. A pro-
fessor concerned about judgments of colleagues rather than
students will engage in different kinds of scholarly acts
and be rewarded differently according to these behaviors.

If he views his students as clients he loses his sensi-
tivity to his colleagues; and as a professional, exercising
a high degree of sensitivity to his colleagues, reduces his
openness to his students or his college. Clients making
judgments of this magnitude are contrary to the professional
model and may have serious implications for the future pro-
fessionalization of the academic profession. If needed

the colleagues are seen as clients and in the professional
model only colleagues are able to evaluate the work of

other professionals, then the clients as colleagues are
making all judgmental decisions. The question of political-
ization gains even greater import if the designation of
clients is other than students or colleagues. If the
professor were to designate the society at large as a client,
he is extremely vulnerable to the political’whims of the
society. Should the professor designate the funders of
research as his clients, the business ethic has replaced
SCholarly investigation and the university has redefined

its central purpose and destroyed all pretenses of profes-

sionalism.

130

Politicalization/Politicization

 

Both of these terms are used extensively in the
literature to describe the process of making any social
institution more politically attuned to the society. The
first term, politicalization, is defined as follows: to
cause to be political or to color with politics. The second
term, politicization, is defined in the following manner:
to bring a political character or flavor to; or to make
political. Both terms, as used in the literature, convey
the same concept, and there seems to be little difference
in the actual meaning as they are defined.

One rather confusing illustration should serve to
illustrate the interchangeable use of these two terms. Two
members of a conference held in SUNY Brockport New York on
February 20, 1970 failed to agree on terminology.

The following is a quote from Sidney Hook's rebuttal
to Henry Aiken's paper "Can American Universities be
Depoliticized" from a conference on "The Politicalization
of the University."

In short, the "depoliticalization" of the univer-
sity means the growth, defense, and vitality of
academic freedom, the "politicalization" of the
university means threats to and erosion of the
principles of academic freedom. By academic freedom
is meant the freedom of professionally qualified
persons to inquire into, to discover, to publiSh,
and to teach the "truth" as they see it--or reach

"conclusions" in such fields as the fine or practical
arts where the term "truth" may be inapplicable--

131

without interference from ecclesiastical, political,

or administrative authorities.18
From these three illustrations it is clear that these two
terms are used interchangeably in the literature as they
will be in this study. Perhaps the most valid grounds for
choosing politicalization over politicization is its ease
of pronunciation. An attempt will be made to be consistent
with the author's terminology when discussing his concepts.

The importance of this concept has been underscored

by several authors. Krause uses politicalization in
speaking about some important trends since the end of
World War II.

Gradually the field of American education has
become politicalized and activist in its own inter-
ests and some segments of it have also become
altruistically active on behalf of causes of a
general political nature, such as anti-war activity,
or the ultimate aims of education. In historical
terms, the increasing militancy and activism of the
educator is of very recent origins, contrasting
with a long past in the service of the powerful at
the expense of occupational and individual self-
interest and in many cases at the expense of the
pursuit of truth as well.19

In speaking of the same period and about the same phenomena,

Robert Nisbet says:

18Hook, In Defense of Academic Freedom, p. 252.

19Elliott A. Krause, The Sociology of Occupations
(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971), p. 299.

132

The final, and in many ways the crucial,
manifestation of the university's Reformation
during the past quarter-century is its extreme
politicization. There are many ways of showing
this: the ever closer relation of the university
to the federal government through the multitudinous
contracts and projects that the universities took
on; the dislodgement or erosion of many of the time
created immunities and autonomies of the university
within the larger political order; the rising
intensity of national political issues assimilated
into the halls of the university and made into
divisive university political issues; the slowly
rising belief on the part of many faculty members
that the university must take, as the university,
an active role in politics; and along with these
more obvious examples of politicization, the steady
increase through the 1950's and 1960's of that
adversary type of relationship one founded on the
utilization of litigation, which one encounters
wherever traditional consensual relationships are
undergoing severe change.20

Krause summarized this position in the following

passage:

The fact that education and educational settings
are inherently political in function has now been
deliberately singled out by reformers, and the
"value free" nature of education itself is increas-
ingly less accepted as a truth by the layman or the
student. Thus, in the future, the concept of
"expertise" may change, especially in the social
sciences and the humanities. This will make the
definition of a given educator's mandate, or a
school's, one that is more in the hands of its
clientele or consumers and less of a professional
prerogative. In other words, the increased under-
standing of the political role of education--by
teachers and community at all levels--is leading
to a "politicized" occupation in the overt instead
of the covert sense of the term, and politics
here means not simply internal occupational
politics but the politics of the community and
nation. Political events in the wider scale

 

PP-

20Nisbet, The Degradation of Academic Dogma,
137-138.’ .

133
will then have a greater effect on the role of
American education than ever before.21
Nisbet and Krause are indicating a very fundamental
epistemological shift in the modern American university.
Professors are no longer seen as guardians Of the truth
but merely as interpreters of a sociology of knowledge
which is created and consumed within the society. The
politicalization of the university makes the scholar vulner-
able to the social interpretation of truth and fundamentally
alters his role from seeking the existence of truths to
composing transient truths that fit the social context.
These authors agree that politicalization is the greatest
threat to the continued professionalization of the scholar.
It is important to note that this is not the first
incidence of political influence on campus but all agree
that it is the most potent. Nisbet discusses the politiciza-
tion of the campus in the thirties as of minor importance
when compared to the current trend.
I am certainly not suggesting that political
behavior on the part of academics was utterly new
to the university in this period. . . . Anyone who
thinks that either students or faculty members
eschewed politics in that earlier decade is utterly
uninformed. I have no reliable figures at hand,
but I would confidently venture the guess that
proportionately far more students were then
declared members of radical political organizations

than was the case in the 1960's. . . . Politics
was indeed a strong current on the American campus

 

21Krause, The Sociology of Occupations, p. 315.

134

in the 1930's, and it is fair to say that a certain
radicalization of the faculty took place. . . . And
yet I do not think that the university as such
became politicized during this earlier period. . . .
The national issues, the national lines of ideology,
the national cleavages may have been, as indeed
they were, reflected on the campus. They did not,
however, often become translated into curricular
issues, academic ideologies, and faculty, qua
faculty, cleavages. . . . By comparison, however,
with what was to exist in the 1950's and 1960's,

it was small in sc0pe and mild in intensity. It

is with no intent of lauding the Old Left that I
can report from considerable personal experience
with it that it did not seek to remake, much less
destroy, the university: only capitalism and
bourgeois culture!22

Nisbet emphasizes the differences in nature and
degree of the politicization in the 1930's compared to that
of the 1960's. The factors that he selects once again
illustrate the interrelation of the society and the
university.

There was the Hiss Case, the spy trials
generally, the establishment of the Independent
Progressive party under Henry Wallace with its
strong radical foundations drawn from the Soviet-
oriented left, the occasional dismissals of
Communists from schools and colleges, the long,
strongly inflaming issues of loyalty oaths for
teachers--with the fateful struggle over the oath
at Berkeley a matter of obsessive concern to
academics nationally--and the whole bitterly
controverted issue of political tests of faculty
qualification.

Above all, there was McCarthyism. . . . I
would suppost that McCarthyism, above any other
single force, had the effect of quickening the
already proceeding radicalization of the American
campus.2

 

22
139-141.

231bid., p. 143.

Nisbet, The Degradation of Academic Dogma, pp.

 

135

Nisbet credits the intense emotionalism directed against
McCarthy for carrying the politicization of the 1960's
beyond that of the 1930's. It seems that cultural circum-
stances and social institutions so combine as to leave the
frail individual professor no real choice. The complex
interrelationships of the governmental funding agencies and
the legitimate social agencies made sorting out political
implications difficult to say the least. But when this was
backed by a very substantial sum of money awarded mainly

to an individual, the temptation provided a host of
rationale for pursuing these social problems as disinter-
ested, Objective scientists.

With the funding of individuals rather than institu-
tions, a new hierarchy arose with status and prestige being
awarded to professors on their ability to perform research,
with very little concern for teaching. This massive
infusion of money had the inevitable effects Of emphasizing
the judgment of colleagues and de-emphasizing the judgment
of students. Scholars were awarded contracts on the
evaluation of their peers and superiors, not on their
ability to develop character in the classroom. In the 1940's
and 1950's, individuals were able to amass sums of money
that would allow them to establish entire research centers

which were essentially the domain of one professor.

136

Nisbet says,

In the American university, however, the kind
of institute that came so richly into being after
World War II was limited by prescription as well
as scholarly preference substantially to research
alone. After all, it was the function of the
department to teach. In the institute or center,
research would be alone. . . . More and more, one
became aware of "department oriented" individuals
on the campus and of "institute oriented" members
of the faculty. Increasingly, the first came to
be thought of as locals and the second as
cosmopolitans.24

This division of teaching and research which had a long-
standing symbiotic relationship had been overcome by
massive infusions of money into a social institution run
by mere humans.

We might have turned our backs on the new wealth
with its built-in demands for a radical restructur-
ing of the university and said in effect: we shall
continue with research of a degree of size,
individuality, and character that the university
has always known; a type of research that is
reconcilable with the sovereign role of teaching in
the university; of teaching—in-scholarship, of
scholarship in teaching. . . . It is always fashion-
able in universities and colleges to blame industry,
profession, and government for all the ills that
befall academic man. Even now a mythology is
forming that makes big government and big industry
responsible for the degradation of the academic
dogma, for the conversion of scholarship into
organized, factory-like research for the transforma-
tion of literally thousands of professors from
teachers and scholars into entrepreneurs of the
research dollar, business and government consult-
ants, managers, directors of essentially industrial
organizations on the campus, and most recently,
founders of lucrative businesses just far enough
outside academic walls to escape university patent
regulations.25

 

241239.” P. 78. 25Ibido, pp. 81.—82.

IF‘

137

The entrepreneurship of the professorate led to a new
affluence not known on the American campus and the division
of labor arranged scholars into funded researchers, non-
funded scholars and teaching locals with great disparities
among the various categories. The aspirations of pro-
fessors were raised to a level that was not to be maintained
by the future society and the depletion of funds changed
the academic picture even more.

Nisbet notes that the new economic affluence came
to the social sciences for the first time, while the physical
sciences and agricultural experiment stations had experi-
enced federal funding for several decades. The new
governmental funding of the social sciences gave infusions
of cash to programs intimately involved with students and
campus activities, not some separated scientific laboratory
or remote agricultural station. These newly funded scholars
were somewhat disenfranchised from the regular departmental
structure often set apart in institutes or centers that
established themselves as independent entities. In addi-
tion, there was the continued escalation and increased
visibility of various administrative groups during this
politicization process. The great wheel was set in motion
when the administration insisted on loyalty oaths and the
faculty responded negatively, leading to administrative

repression and the resultant increase in faculty committees.

138

Prior to the 1940's issues that could have been settled by

faculty concensus were now subjected to committee scrutiny

and adversary relationships in a highly political atmo-

sphere Of liberals and conservatives. With the tenure

system in effect, a solid base for each political group

was always provided that would carefully recruit new

membership loyal to their beliefs. [#4

Nisbet summarizes these developments in the follow-

 

ing passage: 3“

The national scene, the enormous increase in
numbers of students and faculty members, the
fracturing of the traditional structure of author-
ity, the existence of more and more situations
incapable of resolution through processes other
than those Of the adversary relationship of
academic litigation, the rising number of blocs,
caucuses, and similar groups, so suggestive of
political parties, the ever more noticeable
structuring of the faculty into persisting lefts,
centers, and rights, with position on a given
academic issue almost predictable when one knew
what a given individual's "party" was, and the
constantly proliferating issues of direct or
derived political character,--all of these were
the signs of a politicization of the academic
community that had never existed before, not at
least, in anything like the degree that had been
reached by the middle 1950's.26

The pervasiveness of the politicalization of the
university faculty has been the topic of authors concerned
with relationship of the military-industrial-educational
complex. One side of this argument is presented by Sidney

Hook when he cites the findings of a

 

261bid., p. 149.

139

Report of a Special Faculty Committee appointed
to supervise the operation of grants declared that
no political strings were attached to any grant,
that no government or foundation financing had
subverted research. It is interesting that some
research grants to Chomsky, and other critics of
American foreign policy have come from Navy and
other governmental institutions with absolutely
no political strings attached.

The subject is very complex, but three things
are clear. No one compels a university or a
faculty member to undertake any research of which
it or he disapproves. The faculty as an educa-
tional body has the right to lay down guide lines
governing the use of its facilities, the time of
its members, the limits of secrecy, et cetera. NO
accredited university I know of accepts grants to
prove a point of view in advance or to inculcate
Opinions or conclusions specified by the donor.27

Hook continues to defend the right of the professor to
undertake research in the defense of the free society for
the protection of the free university. This point of view
seems to rest the burden of guilt squarely on the professor
and on this view, there must be several immOral practicing
professors.

On the other end of the spectrum are such authors
as Roszak and Chomsky who believe the role of intellectuals
should be that of critics of society. These authors often
emphasize the socializing function of the university as a
means of conserving the traditional social institution.

One might perhaps count on the fingers of one hand

the eras in which the university has been anything
better than the handmaiden of official society;

 

27Hook, In Defense of Academic Freedom, p. 254.

 

140

the social club of ruling elites, the training
school of whatever functionaries the status quo
required.28

Roszak's indictment of the university professor continues
as he illustrates the increased politicalization occurring
following the Second World War.

. . . the ideal of service has matured into a col-
laboration between the universities, the corporate
world, and the government, so indiscriminate that
the American warfare state has had no greater dif-
ficulty finding academic hirelings for any project--
bar none--than its totalitarian opposite numbers.
Ranking physicists and engineers at the "best
schools" unquestioningly pursue classified research
in the refinement of the thermonuclear arsenal.
Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania work
under secret contracts to develop chemical-
biological weaponry. As part of the Army's Project
Camelot, leading social scientists have pooled
their expertise in order to help the American
military plan counterinsurgency activities in Latin
America. . . . But the picture is clear enough: in
the name of service universities and university men
have been prepared to collaborate in genocide,
espionage, deceit, and all the corruptions our
government's sense of omnipotence has led us to.
"Service," by becoming a blanket willingness to

do whatever society will pay for, has led the uni-
versity to surrender the indispensable character-
istic of wisdom: moral discrimination.29

:r‘-_—“
i
I .

Chomsky views the role of the professor, as it is
currently constructed in the society, as incorrect.
"Perhaps the most important role of the intellectual has
been that of unmasking ideology, exposing the injustice

and repression that exists in every society that we

L

28Theodore Roszak, ed., The Dissenting Academy
(New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p. 4.

zglbido ' pp. 11-120

141

30

know." Chomsky goes on to implicate the university in

this process.

I think it would be important for the university
to provide the framework for critical work of this
sort. The matter goes well beyond politics in a
narrow sense. There are inherent dangers in pro-
fessionalization that are not sufficiently recognized
in university structure. There is a tendency as a
field becomes truly professionalized, for its
problems to be determined less by considerations
Of intrinsic interest and more by the availability
of certain tools that have been developed as the
subject matures.3l

I" 1.11

Chomsky's severe criticism of scholars as pawns Of the
military-industrial academic complex is certainly warranted,
but the alternative that he offers here has in it the
dangers of becoming politicalized to the same extent but
from a different special interest group.

The seriousness of the threat of politicalization
should not be under-emphasized. It strikes at the very
heart of knowing as it has been defined in the twentieth
century. The university professors, as the guardians of
truth, have sought to project knowing by the scientific
method almost exclusively and any breach of this method-

ology should be seen as a serious threat to the university.

 

30Noam Chomsky, "Philosophers and Public Policy,"

in Philosgpty and Political Action, ed. by Virginia Held,
Kai Nielsen and Charles Parsons (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1972), p. 209.

311bid., p. 212.

 

142

The scientific method relies in part on the objec-
tive, intersubjectivity of disinterested observers which
politicalization destroys. Because the university has
backed this method so strongly and become involved so
deeply in the solution of social problems, the very basic
method Of knowing is in question. As the investigator
becomes increasingly a part of the thing that he is [F‘J
investigating he loses the ability to remain a disinter- I
ested, objective observer. Investigations Of this nature
are devoid of the value—free status so important to the
scientific method.

The society has begun to question the ability of
the scientific method to solve social problems. Stephen
Toulmin stresses the separation between the ability of,
science to predict and explain, emphasizing its explanatory
power. The social sciences have virtually abandoned any
pretenses of prediction, which the society finds particu-
larly annoying. Politicalization of the university has
tended to expose the academic profession as purveyors of
the wrong kind of knowing much as the medical profession
has been exposed as backing curative rather than preventa-
tive medicine. Both are being questioned on very basic
grounds that professions would rather not lay Open for
examination. Politicalization threatens the academic
profession as a social institution but also more funda-

mentally it questions their epistemology.

143

Bureaucracy_and Unionization
These two indicators of professionalism will be
considered together because they are closely related and
because of the previously explained effects of bureaucracy
on the professional. There is a variance of opinion con-
cerning the degree of compatibility of the professional
and bureaucracy, but most scholars now agree that profes-
sional autonomy is limited by a bureaucracy only to a
minor degree. Pavalko summarizes several studies in the
following way:
The general conclusion that emerges from

these and other studies of professionals in

bureaucracies is that within the same profession

there may be divergent orientations toward both

the employing organization and the profession.

While it is possible to be oriented toward both,

it is difficult to maintain this state of margin-

ality without some negative consequences for

either the individual, the organization, or both.

Although the degree of professionalism varies

among persons in the same profession, the

stronger this orientation is the greater will

be the conflict between the professional and

the organization.32
So, rather than a bureaucratic organization inhibiting
professional autonomy, there is a resolution of conflict
within the organization that works to their mutual benefit.
Parsons explains the academic profession in terms of

collegial relationships which sets it apart from the usual

bureaucracy.

32Ronald M. Pavalko, Soctplogy of Occupations and
Professions (Hasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock, 1971), p. 189.

144

Despite necessary differences in levels of
distinction, the faculty and its most important
subunit, the department, are basically companies
of equals where major status differences are
those of stages of career, especially the line
between probationary and tenure status. This
stands in sharp contrast to the pyramidal struc-
ture of bureaucratic hierarchies, with their
steadily increasing concentration of all the
components of status as one moves toward the
top, which can often be occupied only by one
individual at a time. In a society where many
say the process of bureaucratization is coming
to dominate everything, it is notable that this
type of organization has not only survived, but
has actually been strengthened.33

In studying highly professionalized occupations similar to
the university professorate, Hall made the following

observation.

Thus, the professional may not find himself
necessarily in conflict with the larger organiza-
tion. A higher level of bureaucratization was
found among less professionalized groups, suggest-
ing that in the absence of professional norms,
organizational norms may maintain equilibrium.

As a group becomes more professionalized, conflict
may increase unless the level of bureaucratization
is reduced.34

The academic profession being a highly professionalized
occupation, has developed a particular kind of relation-
ship that has sought to maintain an equilibrium with the

bureaucratic structure in which it resides. Any change

 

33

in Twenty-FiveYears, 1945-1970 (San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass Inc., 1970), p. 243.

34Richard H. Hall, "Some Organizational Considera-
tions in the Professional Organizational Relationship,"
Administrative Science Quarterly, XII (December, 1967),
461.

Talcott Parsons, "New Roles for Faculties: 1966,"

"L--

145

by either party in this equilibrium situation could lead
to conflict and deterioration of the profession.

The academic profession is in the midst of experi-
encing an organizational disruption of this equilibrium
in the form of unionism. Some university faculties already
are unionized (about six percent Of the total) but the
trend is unmistakable. The roots of this movement go
back at least to the Second World War and may be traced
to the socialistic movement of the 1930's. Shortly after
World War II, the rapid expansion of the universities
caused increased pressure of existing faculties and
facilities. Increased student numbers forced faculty to
try new techniques of teaching introducing technology and
methods for mass lecturing into various classroom situa-
tions.

The strain was also on faculty recruitment. It was
important to obtain more faculty to teach the swelling
courses and these faculty were recruited from various
places and various walks of life. There was concern to
maintain quality in the midst of this influx of teachers.
Often scholars were imported from other countries with
their international views and cultures. The effect was to
dissipate the parochialism of the colleges and lend a new
worldmindedness to the faculty. There was, however,
another unanticipated effect, and that was to emphasize a

candidate's credentials rather than his personality. The

146

most reliable information that could be obtained about a
faculty member was derived from careful scrutiny of his
degrees, publications and other credentials.‘ These pres-
sures tended to release the grip of the inner fraternity
which had traditionally obtained new faculty by a word of
mouth network. While this network was not entirely
eliminated, it Often broke down in its screening of new
faculty and some "undesirable" faculty were hired. Because
of the continued pressure of high enrollments, these
faculty were often retained and placed on tenure. There
is some suspicion that these members became the "deadwood"
and radical faculty leaders of the 1970's.

In addition, the favorable job market provided for
great job mobility and the influx of questionable scholars.
The result was what Veblen and Dewey had warned against
earlier, the mixture of scholarship with the business ethic.

The velocity of movement from job to job

weakened the feeling of community among members
of the same faculty or discipline; and the readi-
ness to make a place for outsiders--journalists,
politicians, and bureaucrats from government and
business-blurred the sense of the university as
a unique institution dedicated to scholarly ends 3
and values of its own.35
In this environment of rapid expansion and favorable employ-

ment opportunities, wages trended upward, forced by the

pressure of "imports" from other fields and a scarcity of

 

35Handlin and Handlin, The American College,
pp. 84-85.

147

qualified individuals. It may be postulated that this
release from poverty coupled with the increased govern-
mental funding tended to undermine the integrity of the
university professor. This allegation would be difficult
to prove but many authors have alluded to the decline in
professionalism directly proportional to the increase in
salary, wages and funding.

The increase in size meant an increase in the
'distance between student and the faculty. The impersonality
of the large university was to be blamed for much of the
student discontent of the late sixties. As suggested pre-
viously, the rewards for the scholars did not emphasize
teaching nor did the Ph.D. socialization. Those professors
who were student oriented were so at the risk of promotion
and tenure.

There is also a new atmosphere surrounding the.
university which is more conserving of its gains. The
unforecast glut of Ph.D. graduates will have a marked effect
on the future of the university. During the last nine years,
over one-half of all the Ph.D.‘s ever awarded in American
universities have been given, and over half of these have
gone into college teaching. Projections indicatethat.thei
colleges and universities will require only about one

quarter of the doctoral graduates in the next ten years.36

 

36Dale Wolfe and Charles V. Kidd, "The Future Market
for Ph.D.‘s," Science, CLXXIII (August 27, 1971), 791.

148

Wolfe has made several speculations based on these
figures. He estimates that there will be more professors
with Ph.D.‘s and that young professors will remain
untenured longer. New doctorates will accept lower
post-doctoral stipends and spend more time teaching and
less time doing research; in other words, perform many of

the functions now done by graduate students. Young

.1

faculty members will receive fewer salary increases, slower

)P .‘.‘A

job promotions and generally less upward mobility. These
projections, according to Wolfe, make young professors
especially vulnerable to unionism. Unions claim to protect
faculty members that already have jobs by restricting the
number of doctoral graduates, by insisting on certification
for all job holders, and by increasing retirement benefits
to encourage early retirement. The threat of unionism to
the delicate balance of the academic profession may be the
critical academic issue of the 1970's. The power base of
the departmental structure will certainly be disrupted and
large bargaining agents tend to beget large bargaining
agents.

With the withdrawal of large federal funding pro-
grams and the pressure on higher education from social
critics, the universities are experiencing economic dif-
ficulties unknown in the 1960's. Student enrollments have

recently trended downward. Lieberman states that

149

"everywhere higher education is under unprecedented
budgetary pressure threatening basic salaries and tenure
as well as traditional professional perquisites such as

37 These kinds of

sabbaticals and travel allowances."
pressures will tend to unite the professors and force them
into a collective bargaining situation which ultimately
favors unionism.

Lieberman sees the unionization Of faculty as
inevitable. Speculating on this notion one can foresee
some drastic changes for the professor. It is probable
that such a move will lead to some method of accountability
of academic services. Faculty accountability will undoubtedly
limit the autonomy of the individual and may break down
departmental structures because of its emphasis on some
common denominator such as teaching. The departmental
structure is already showing signs Of stress from the
organization of interdisciplinary institutes and the demands
of students for direct channels to present grievances about
faculty members without following the hierarchical bureau-
cratic structure. The destruction of the university I
department will force the replacement by some alternative
structure which will undoubtedly be more powerful and

probably larger than its predecessor. The new faculty

 

37Myron Lieberman, "Professors Unite!" Harper's
Magazine, October, 1971, p. 63.

150

structure will probably be a large unionistic structure
representing all faculty members united in a collective
bargaining arrangement against the forces of the administra-
tion. As Lieberman portrays it, the future will appear

like this:

The role of a faculty should not be to admin-
ister an institution but to insure that administra-
tion is fair and equitable. Unfortunately, pathetic
confusions about professionalism have misled faculty
members into believing that professors at each
institution are entitled to make management
decisions. The tragedy is that so many administra-
tors, governing heads, and legislators have been
cornered into accepting this irresponsible doctrine.
Collective bargaining will force professors out of
administration, but administrators will be monitored
by faculty unions in the performance of their
administrative duties.38

The adversary model that Lieberman proposes has

some notions that are contrary to the professional model

and will undoubtedly hasten the decline of the academic
profession. It should be emphasized that the decline of the
academic profession may have several positive connotations.
There are many who View the traditional professional
superior-subordinate relationship as the incorrect model

for a "community of scholars," and welcome the colleagual
structure of collective bargaining as a revitalizing force
for the university.

This section has attempted to analyze four indi-

cators of professionalism and demonstrate how they may

 

381bid., p. 69.

151

combine to cause a decline in what has come to be under-
stood as the academic profession. The designation of
colleague as client represents an unusual professional
situation. The pervasiveness of the concept of politicali-
zation has caused a social infiltration of a profession to
such an extent that it threatens to redefine the function
of the institution as well as the knowledge base on which
it is founded.

The scholar has reached a delicate balance with the
bureaucratic organization in which he works and has actually
overcome this threat to professional autonomy. Through
long years of carefully constructed power moves the faculty
has flattened out the hierarchical structure to a staff
oriented colleagual network. Recent moves by administration,
faculty and the lay public agencies to gain power have led
to a disruption of this organizational structure and the
emergence of a new organizational model better able to
bargain equally for authority. Collective bargaining and
unionistic tactics are not usually considered to be the
tools of a professional, mainly because of their effects
on autonomy.

The analysis of each of these four indicators of
professionalism leads to the same conclusion--the decline
of the traditional ideology that surrounds the professional
in this particular instance, the decline of the academic

profession.

apt. I5 bani-ii“

CHAPTER VI

ALTERNATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES

Given the increasing probability of the unionism
Of many faculties, and its effects on the delicate equilib-
rium of the bureaucratic structure that now exists, it is
certain that organizational conflict and accommodation will
exist in the near future.

It is prOpOSed, by this study, that two distinct
kinds of alternative organizational structures will arise
to accommodate this destroyed equilibrium. One alternative
structure will mediate conflict between the university and
the society and the other will alleviate conflict within
the university. The former type of organizational struc-
ture will be termed separate and specialized because their
job will be to take over some of the specialized functions
that are currently performed by the university. The latter
type of organizational structure will be termed a parallel
structure because it indicates the construction of co-equal
organizations, each having approximately the same power

and autonomy.

152

153

Parallel Structures

 

This study has demonstrated that where professional
and quasi-professional collide in a bureaucratic setting an
equilibrium is reached where role conflict is accommodated
and a shared power arrangement is established. It is pro-
posed that because of the nature of the current administrative-
faculty adversary relationship, the future organizational
pattern within the university will take the form of large,
co-equal, collective bargaining units that may be termed
parallel structures. These parallel structures may be two
or more, dependent on the number of quasi-professional
units striving for power and the strength of the profession
that is in power. Another feature of these structures will
be the intercession of some mediating group that will act
as communicant among the various parallel power groups.

Evidence of the construction of parallel structures
can be found in the occupational literature about pro-
fessions. Wilensky, speaking of this kind of power struggle
for authority, says:

A preview of these mixed forms of control may

be seen in some of the newer, marginal, or would-
be professions--in occupations in which careers

do not lead to management but where control is
split among professionals, laymen, and administra-
tors (e.g., the many occupations ancillary to
medicine such as hospital administration, nursing,

pharmacy). The crucial question concerns how much
weight professionals, bosses, laymen or clients

154

carry in decisions regarding standards of entry,

performance, reward, and promotion.1
In another study, Wilensky emphasized the ability of pro-
fessionals to adapt to bureaucratic organizations in one
of two ways. Professionals may modify their work role so
that its demands and expectations are more compatible with
their professional orientation, or shift their entire role
orientation from the professional group to the bureaucratic
organization. These kinds of role modifications are
inevitable in the event of unionization. The professional
must decide whether his allegiance will remain with the
department or shift to the new professional organizational
unit, the union. It is also conceivable that the professor
might divide allegiance between the two or even among
additional groups such as the university, the wider
academic discipline or an administrative or student-
oriented group. What unionization does indicate is a more
complex set of role relationships. Wilensky has found that
professional orientations depend very heavily on the educa-
tional and work socialization of the professional, which
has important implications for the future training of
doctoral candidates.

Several authors concerned with the academic pro—

fession have alluded to the notion of parallel structures.

Parsons, in 1966, saw the beginnings of this process.

 

lWilensky, "The Professionalization of Everyone?"
p. 155.

155

These considerations about the convergence of
functions in the academic world raise important
questions about the form of social organization
which develops in response to these demands, but
also in relation to a variety of other major
develOpmental forces in modern society. . . .
Perhaps the best available term to designate it is
collegial structure. It is closer to the pattern
of the voluntary association, and indeed in its
own collective decision-making functions is one,
than it is to the classical conception of bureauc-
racy with the implications Of the primacy of line
authority. . . . Concurrent with the strengthening
of collegial structures, we have been seeing an
immense growth in the complex we call university
administration. . . . This administrative bureauc-
racy could readily encroach seriously on the
position of faculties as defined in the traditions
of academic freedom and tenure, but the striking
thing is how little this has taken place.2

The most obvious example Of the formation of
parallel structures occurs in the modern hospital. In this
case the professionals (doctors) work in a bureaucratic work
setting (the hospital) and are confronted with several
quasi-professional groups (i.e., nurses, pharmacists,
anesthestists and even interns). The professional group is
not about to reduce its authority or alter its professional
role, but they must have the support of all these quasi—
professional groups in order to perform their central
professional function. The resolution of this conflict has
been achieved by the intercession of another quasi-
professional group, the hospital administrators who are

appointed jointly by professionals and non-professionals

 

2Parsons, "New Roles for Faculties: 1966," pp. 243-
244.

156

and struggle to gain their authority from both groups in
order to perform their job of coordination.

There are some obvious comparisons that can be drawn
between the organization of the hospital and the organiza-
tion of a university. Each has a lay board of directors
which has a limited amount of control, an established
professional group with its contingent power base and an
administrative group responsible for the coordination of
professionals, semi-professionals and the lay groups. An
analogy can also be made between the medical intern and
the graduate assistant. While it would be difficult to
term either of these as quasi-professional, it is equally
difficult to define the point at which one is no longer
apprentice and becomes professional. The rite of passage
is not at all distinct and many of the functions performed
by the professional are performed equally by the sub-
professional apprentice.

It would not be too difficult to manufacture quasi-
profesSional groups that are contending for the authority
' of the professional groups in the university setting. Most
of the recently develOped academic support units could be
given the same status as nurses and anesthetists. Many
large universities maintain their own testing service and
counseling center with its multiplicity of student-personnel

services which Operate in a marginal authority situation.

157

Seldom considered as faculty but not desirous of the
administration label, these non-professional groups often
organize separately from either and bargain independently.
The recent develOpment of the office of ombudsman
can be seen as a close parallel to the situation of the
hospital administrator. Each is hired by a group of pro-

fessionals and quasi-professionals with the approval of F

some lay board. The function in each case is to act as I
mediator among the various power groups smoothing the waters 9
and receiving its authority to act from a consensus of

those participants over which it has jurisdiction. This

is a precarious position designed to facilitate communi-

cations within a bureaucratic structure.

The Third Party: Student Unions

 

The recipient of the professional service becomes
the key to the continued professionalization in the
academic situation because they may control the balance
of power. There is an increasing level of client dis-
satisfaction with the medical profession as there is in
most professional areas. Student dissatisfaction has been
displayed more forcefully, however, and they seem to be in
a better position to affect a change in the authority
relationships of the university. This is not to say that
the students, as they are currently constituted, will wield
this kind of power nor does it mean to imply that they haVe

in the past. Previous demonstrations of student power have

158

been isolated incidents mainly in reaction to the
politicalization of the university and not indications
of a move toward power usurpation of the authority
structure of the university. These isolated incidents
(i.e., the Free Speech Movement, the Columbia Strike and
the Cornell Incident) should be indications of the depth
of feeling that the student body has sustained toward the 3‘
increased politicalization of the university, but students
fail to have power or organization to overcome the co-
Optation of the university structure. Hook seems to over—
state the case in his book edited shortly after the student
strike of May, 1970. He provides examples of the decline
of professionalism in the university and attributes the
failure of the SUNY Buffalo revitalization to the
destruction of academic freedom by the radical students.

. . . these principles of academic freedom are

being threatened more by extremist students than

by fundamentalist bishOps, economic royalist

tycoons, and political demagogues. For these

students presume to determine who should speak

on campus and who shouldn't, break up meetings

of those with whom they disagree, disrupt the

classrooms of teachers of whom they disapprove,

demand the cessation of research they regard as

not in the public interest, and clamor for the

dismissal of teachers whose views they denounce

as racist, reactionary or imperialist.
This present study of professionalism in higher education

would prOpose that this is an over-simplified View of the

situation.and is actually placing the blame in the wrong

 

253 3Sidney Hook, In Defense of Academic Freedom,
p. . ’

159

place. Furthermore, the clamorings of the students should
be taken as indications of the deeper disease, here
described as the decline of academic professionalism.

The real threat to authority posed by students is
not through their isolated disruption of classes or even
their sporadic stOppage of university functioning. Their
only hOpe of real power can come from the construction of
a parallel organizational structure with a collective
bargaining power similar to that of the faculty union and
the administrative-lay-public complex. The formation of a
student union would leave the academic professional no
escape from client evaluation and client selection.

This type of client evaluation is quite different
from the colleague as client notion, spelled out in the
previous chapter. It is generally conceded that a univer-
sity faculty could agree that some broad statement of
creation and dissemination of knowledge would be valid
grounds for the selection and evaluation of colleagues.

To impute these same ideas of the university to the student
population is to ignore much of what it means to go to
college in the American society of the 1970's. Evaluation
from a student perspective may be much more closely tied

to the relevance of education to the current society and
the immediate worth of his diploma in terms of a vocation

or another means of upward social mobility. When students

160

want the same things out of education that the professors
want, it will either be a utopia or an Orwellian Society.
As Dr. Blackington phrases it,

They (professors) seek to make sense out of
the world and this takes enormous amounts of time
in reading, writing, thinking and teaching. These
activities are engaged in to clarify thought--
theirs as well as those of their communicants.

As such, these activities constitute communal
endeavors to develOp a more adequate conceptual Fer
apparatus by which the world may be addressed. 1
For those less smitten by the desire to reformu- I
late the conceptual apparatus of a field of ;
inquiry, there is a similarly demanding task

of critically translating the ideas of the ages
into the modern idiom for the purpose of under-
standing and evaluation. These two types of
activities, related and somewhat overlapping,
constitute the intent--the community of professors.

Professors are seldom judged in terms of this
intent. Few students and administrators are
equipped by interest or competence to assess its
embodiment. This is not their world-~this maze
of substantive claims and counterclaims of soul-
wrenching doubt, of methodological battles, of
'splitting hairs' and occasional infinitives.

It is, however, the professional world and it
contains seeds of their conception Of education
and success.4

There will be other educational items at issue with
the development of student unions and it may mean that the
items under consideration would be more in the professional
purview than those highly political issues outlined in the
previous chapter. Lieberman sees student unions as quite
logical extensions of the collective bargaining situation

and instrumental in negotiating for more effective teaching.

 

4Frank H. Blackington III, Unpublished Manuscript.

161

The student unions will seek to participate
in bargaining between the faculty and the adminis-
tration, and they will often be the decisive factor
in resolving disputes between these groups. In
these disputes, students will usually line up with
the administration against the faculty. . . . In
any case, the viability of student unions will
depend on their ability to act effectively on
campus issues. If they can do this, they could
have a beneficial impact on higher education.5

Lieberman's optimism is not shared by all educators,

but the construction of parallel organizational structures

widening the circle of colleagual relationships may be an

essential step in the reaffirmation of the central functions

of the academic profession. The socialization and social
allocation functions of the university while necessary and

important, are not sufficient grounds for the continuation

of the university. There are too many other social institu-

tions that are willing and able to perform these social
functions. The university is primarily an institution of
knowledge.

Separate and Specialized

Institutional Structures

It is the further contention of this study that

alternative organizational structures, not confined to
the organizational patterns within the university will be
constructed. There is evidence in the wider academic
community to indicate that separate and specialized

institutional structures may relieve the intense political

 

5Lieberman, "Professors, Unite!" p. 70.

162

pressures that the university receives from the society.
Jencks and Riesman illustrate this point in this way:

Over the next generation it seems likely that many
more academic specialists with outside research
grants will re-group themselves in exclusively
graduate departments or in university-based
research institutes, leaving the bulk of under-
graduate education tO professors in less affluent
specialties.6

This movement has already begun in several ways in and F1
out Of the university. 3]
One could list the various centers and institutes on re

many campuses, which for all intents and purposes, are
separate and equal organizations existing on their own
with their own money and personnel. Often these are
strictly research oriented organizations with little or no
teaching function. The fact that they are housed on a
university campus should not disguise their function as the
same as that of the university. There are also research
and develOpment centers located separately from the
university campus, established with the stated purpose of
performing research rather than teaching. Often these are
agricultural extension Offices and agricultural experiment
stations established throughout the state for the express
purpose Of disseminating information to the residents Of
that particular area, devoid Of any pretense of academic
trappings. These are truly specialized social institutions

that should function autonomOusly from the university and

 

6Jencks and Riesman, The Academic Revolution, p. 246.

 

163

relieve it of the awesome responsibility of managing and
coordinating all these separate organizations.

Other examples of separate academic structures are
in existence in various parts of the United States. The
community college and junior college systems with their
various sub-units of vocational and technical training
perform a recognizable function without the encumberances
of the university stigma. The upper division universities
of California and Florida exhibit specialized structures
that exist for a particular specified purpose that is
definable and understandable. Other examples of academic
but non-university affiliated social institutions could be
conceived from separate and specialized structural
organizational patterns.

'In summary of this position, Nisbet asks some
pertinent questions about the future of the university that
could be answered by the institution of these separate and
specialized organizational structures.

What should the university be in the future?

Stating the matter differently, what vitalizing
function can be seen for the university that is
alone capable, given the special character of its
resources and character, of restoring academic
authority and rebuilding academic community?

Keystone of the research establishment? But

there are other organizations better qualified for
this, given the technical requirements of large
scale research today. Adjunct government? But
government has its own special demands and requires
its own distinctive roles. And these appear ill

suited to academic aptitudes. Radical critic or
conscience of society? But societies do not

164

generally support, with tenure, their radical
critics; and anyhow there are more fertile contexts
for the Gracchi, Robespierres, Benthams, Marxes and
Lenins of history. Supreme humanitarian, responsible
for all of society's political, economic and psycho-
logical ills and deprivations? The university is
basically no more qualified for this than is either
the church or the labor union. Therapeutic community
designed to heal identity crises in middle-class
youth? But even to the extent that this function may
now be said to exist more or less successfully, it
does so only in the reflected glow of the university
believed to be a genuine intellectual community.
Microcosm of culture, of the creative arts? To some
extent, without doubt, but any thought of the uni-
versities cloistered community being seed bed for

the Shakespeares, Mozarts and Picassos of history,

of providing necessary incentives, flies in the

face of all that we know about the nourishing con-
texts of the arts in society.7

To establish separate, autonomous specialized social insti-
tutions for each of these seems to be a probable extension
of his argument. He further wants to free the university
to enable it to perform once again its proper function,
which he sees as research-in-teaching and teaching-in-
research of such a magnitude that does not dwarf the rest
of the institutional functions. He concludes this argument
by stating,
There is no inherent, self-sustaining, irresist-

able majesty in the university; only that majesty

that is conferred upon the university by a social

order that, for whatever reason, has come to believe

that there is something distinctive, something

precious, something profoundly important in the

university that is to be found nowhere else in

society--and when this belief is allowed to erode,
majesty erodes with it.

 

7Nisbet, Degradation of Academic Dogma, p. 206.

 

8Ibid., p. 235.

165

It is imperative that the university find some method to
retreat from the multiplicity of functions that it now
performs and concentrate on those functions central to its
traditional construction, namely teaching and scholarly

research closely connected with the teaching.

 

Reformulation of Academic Structure L

The flexibility of the academic role and the social
institution called the university seems to have been able
to accommodate the many social impositions enumerated by
this study. The professor has made an adjustment to the
bureaucratic work setting and emerged as an even more
powerful force than those once above him in the administra-
tive hierarchy. The threat of client intervention usurping
authority and power seems to have been overcome by the
colleagual structure entered into by the faculty. The
threat of student power developing beyond its present
level seems unlikely if it maintains its present individua-
lized form.

The role of the academic professional will be
markedly changed by the unionization of faculty and the
possible unionization of students. The organizational
threat of unionism is such that it will upset the delicate
balance described by the various authors referred to in
this study. This kind of adversary rather than collegial

relationship could restructure the various professional

166

roles in the university setting to such an extent that the
conflict of allegiance to professional discipline, union
organization or university setting would confuse the public
service notion assigned to the university by the society.
Present socialization patterns existing in the educational
programs of the university professor do not provide
adequately for these new organizational models nor do the Ft}
work socialization patterns. This lack of adequate prepara-
tion in c0ping with the new organization of the university
may lead to the decline of the academic profession as it

is now conceived.

However, as indicated previously, the decline of
the currently constructed academic profession may be
necessary to reformulate an organizational pattern that
will facilitate the rebirth of the university. The union-
ization of the faculty will most probably cause dramatic
changes in the role of the university professor. But some
reaction to the build-up of large administrative structures
by the faculty and confusion of purpose due to increased
politicalization seems inevitable.

Academic professionals and university quasi-
professionals have experienced differences of Opinion
concerning that which should be designated as the central
function of the university. Some of the professional
faculty continue to offer the creation and dissemination

of knowledge while some quasieprofessionals counter with

167

socialization and social criticism. While this is an over
simplification, inaccurately stating the position Of either,

it establishes the core of disagreement. The resolution of

this dispute is crucial to the continuance Of the university.

The most amiable solution to this part Of the problem seems
to be the construction Of separate social structures in
addition to, and in relief of, the university. The
decentralization Of the multiplicity Of functions now
performed by the university is imperative. Removal of
politically involved research and development programs to
other social institutions is right and proper. The institu-
tion Of less formal socialization structures is possible
but more difficult. Private patronage of individual
scholars Of promise might be encouraged so that alterna—
tive institutes or individual incentive programs could
augment the university's traditionally hostile institu-
tional environment toward genius.

In addition to the specialized and separate social
structures constructed outside Of the university to
alleviate pressure on the institution, parallel collegial
structures should be constructed within the university so
that power is more equally divided among the various
contestants within the university. While faculty may wish
for consensus or the old authorative administrator, the
immediate realities of the situation dictate large col-

lective bargaining organizations. Until the social

168

pressures enumerated in this study are lifted from the
academic profession, each professor would be better advised
to consider carefully those items he believes to be most
important for negotiation rather than the advisability of
collective bargaining per se. Observation reveals the
administrative-lay forces already separate and organized
while the professional faculty forces are inhibited by
ideals of declining professionalism.

The prime professional considerations of the univer-
sity Of the 1970's should be the depoliticalization of the
university, the reestablishment Of the delicate organiza—
tional balance within the university, and the understanding
Of the factors involved in the decline of the academic pro-
fession. The romance of the professions and the society
are a thing Of the past. Members of society are asking
hard questions of their social institutions and Often
finding the intended functions have changed over time and
other unintended functions have taken their place. In
these instances the society has Often challenged the
existing institution and sought to construct another struc-
ture in its stead or destroy the institution entirely.

The university has not reached this latter stage of
decay as yet, and measures may still be taken to prevent
this from happening. The steps outlined here lead to the
building of parallel structures within the university and

separate and specialized social institutions in addition

169

to the university, with the primary results being a
decentralization of social institutions and equalization

of power groups within the university.

Implications for Further Research

If the lack of adequate studies of the college
professor is apparent, the need for them is equally
evident. No one in the early 1960's can doubt that
our society is changing at an ever increasing rate.
And our educational system in particular is in all
probability confronted with a turbulent and revolu-
tionary period. . . . If these challenges of the
future are to be met, they will, in the final
analysis, be met by college professors. It clearly
behooves us to study this profession more thoroughly
and more extensively if clear and effective answers
are to be found to the problems that confront us
now and will confront us still more forcibly in
the future.9

WW. ..0 r I
I

Even though Knapp wrote this ten years ago, it is even more
true today. The failure of scholars to predict and study
systematically what would happen in their own professions
has led to grave consequences during the late 1960's and
early 1970's. The world-wide student revolution, the
rampant politicalization of the university, the anti-
scientism of the counter culture and the drastic over supply
of doctoral graduates are but a few of the examples of
issues of great social impact that have influenced pri-
marily the university and were unpredicted and virtually

unknown until the academic society was immersed in them.

 

9Robert H. Knapp, "Changing Functions of the
College Professor," in The American College, ed. by Nevitt
Sanford (New York: John WiIéy and Sons, 1962), pp. 306-
307.

170

Scholarship in this area has become an act of reporting
rather than a logical extension of theoretical frameworks
into the future. This attempt to analyze the academic
profession should raise a series of questions for which
empirical research could provide answers.

The first set of concerns might revolve around the
theoretical framework which underlies this analytical
study of the academic profession.

First is the notion that the deep roots of the
academic profession in the society ties the profession very
closely to the society. The academic profession may be
quite different in different societies. Similar literature
reviews might be conducted in various other societies,
especially those that have not followed the same paths to
mass education at the college level; or societies that have
not undertaken such massive research programs as have been
conducted by the government in conjunction with the
American university.

Secondly, the professions are based on a work
ideology institutionalized through the educational system
and supported by professional organizations. The profes-
sions need a culture of work coupled with the propensity
toward a stratified society where the society awards
position, stature and prestige to those who attain the
professional position. Societies that are not based on a

stratified society or a more traditional society that may

171

not be based on a work ideology might yield comparative
information showing future alternatives.
Thirdly, professionalization is a democratic notion
based on equality of educational opportunity and a com-
petative meritocratic system rather than an aristocratic
premise. This is one of the reasons that the professional
idea is spreading so quickly into the quasi-professional L‘
and non-professional occupations in the American society.
Those societies not based on these premises still have an L»
academic profession and they must receive social sanction
in some way. A comparative study of these cultural
positions would be of interest.
As the academic profession has paralleled the
development of the industry in the American society, it
has adopted an economic model of production and efficiency
which closely coincides with the industrial model. Many
other university work settings have rejected this
efficiency model and insisted on providing an academic
service to the society. Paradyms of academic organizations
could be constructed based on models other than the economic
industrial model. The centrality of the university in the
society indicates that the solution of social problems may
lead to a new institutional model with a public service
orientation.
Other kinds of empirical studies could result from

the analysis presented here. The most obvious are those

172

dealing with surveys of faculty members obtaining their
attitudes toward professionalization and unionization.

The client designation problem may have changed since the
student strike of 1970 and the adverse publicity connected
with the increased politicalization of the campus. Surveys

concerning the recognition of politicalization by various

 

faculty members would be of value in assessing the future L1
of the university. '-
Another very useful study could involve a reading )_n

of professional attitudes of faculty members before and
after unionization. This opportunity is available
presently on many university campuses and would make an
interesting and informative longitudinal study.

If the projection of student unions is at all
accurate, there is an entire field of labor relations
never before explored open to the scholar concerned with
a long term study starting from the very outset of
organizational formation. Student unions bargaining
collectively for academic issues have their precedent in
medieval history and more recently in graduate student
organizations. The faculty reaction to graduate student
organization has been assisted by the virtual closing of
the job market allowing faculty to eliminate graduate
assistant positions and severely restrict graduate
enrollments. This would not be possible with under-

graduate enrollments, at least not to the same extent.

173

A final category of research that might result from
this analytical study of the academic profession is the
area of professional role models. Since the Spring of
1970, many professors have noted a change in the atmosphere
of the university, especially in the seriousness of the
students and the calm of the campus. Faculty members that
took definite stands during the student strike have had an
opportunity to quietly reflect on this position and could
provide a more accurate account of the situation both now
and then. What of the role of those faculty members
associated with research institutes and centers? What are
their concerns about the depoliticalization of the univer—
sity and the construction of separate specialized social
institutions? What are the attitudes of the new group of
students in search of relevant higher education? What do
they see as the future of this social institution?

Some comparative work has been done within this
society regarding two year and four year institutions of
higher education. It would be fully within the Spirit of
this study to conduct an investigation into the reasons
for the development of the union movement in the two year
colleges and determine how it Spread into the four year
schools. The modification of role behavior within the two
institutions might be quite different and their relative
professional position may be significantly altered in the

future. Several other comparative studies might be

174

conducted within the society involving the specialized and
separate junior, senior, graduate and four year institu-
tions.

Many implications for the future of the university
can be drawn from this analysis of the decline of profes-
sionalism in the American university. The future is
uncertain. But a failure to recognize and organize research
around some principle such as professionalization will not

aid in alleviating this uncertainty. The decline of

m fin-.1
. I

academic professionalism may mean the loss of a vital
public service function traditionally provided by the
university. No society can exist for long without the
advance of knowledge by a group of scholars free to explore
and extend understanding in an atmOSphere of freedom from
political restraint and interaction. The depoliticalization
of the university is essential. The study of the client
relationship in the academic profession is long overdue.
The unionization of the faculty is taking place with a
minimum of research and review, which is unfortunate for

a profession that claims to be scholarly and prides itself
on research.

This may, however, be the beginning of a new era
ushering in the establishment of many different kinds of
institutions for the advancement of knowledge. The notion of
alternative organizational structures allows for a broad

interpretation of human and institutional goals. The future

175

American university may be dependent upon a better under—
standing of the professional issues questioned by this
study. It is imperative to choose a path to better under-
standing through a theoretical framework, backed and
supported by empirical research and practiced by an

understanding group of individuals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

176

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Barber, Bernard. "Some Problems in the Sociology of the
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Barzun, Jacques. The House of Intellect. New York:
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