Who is a professional? In the days of our unwashed ancestors when literacy was uncommon, the literate precursors to today's professionals (scribes, clerks, mandarins) had special rights and responsibilities. What were these, and why were they conferred? What does professionalism consist in, now that almost everybody wants to be called a "professional"?
Anyone who engages in an occupation as his/her principal means of livelihood is often called a professional. Yet if someone is called a professional gambler, thief, politician, or sex worker, we know that there is something half-jocular or ironic in the appellation. So one caveat is that the occupation cannot be wholly self-serving: professionals provide their skills and services in the name of a greater good.
In any society beyond the most primitive, the division of labor will give rise to a class which purports to serve the larger, collective interest of the group. Storytellers, shamans, and priests receive special training in the language and lore of their social roles as custodians of the symbolic unity of the culture.
Professionalism, fully understood, carries with it rights and responsibilities that are vestiges of priestly status, as the twofold meaning of "clerical" suggests. Professionals are not engaged or employed because of their expert skills alone, but also because of their assumed special responsibility for guardianship or trusteeship of the public interest. The clergy's primary clients are not themselves or their congregations, but the divine order as envisioned by their religious tradition. Physicians, like all professionals, are obligated to render services in emergencies, even when there is no prospect of payment. Attorneys serve not only themselves, their clients, and their firms, but have an overriding duty to promote justice as officers of the court, even when this means conflict with some lesser interest. (Ideally, they should also serve the common good with pro bono work for indigent clients.)
In contrast to hourly wage workers, professionals respond to the demands of the situation-not some supervisor-by doing what must be done when it must be done, even if this sometimes (but not routinely!) means working extended hours, working on weekends or holidays, taking work home, or the like. They are paid to apply expert knowledge and trained judgment, not to simply exert physical force or mark time or suck up to the boss.
As a result, professionals cannot be closely supervised or micromanaged. The two principal models of work-life governance are the military and the collegial.
Under the military model, the idea is to obey orders issued by a hierarchical superior somewhere up the chain of command. This has never been workable as a means of organizing the work of professionals, though supervisors usually promote it as the only possible model.
Collegial governance implies self-regulation by a body of peers or colleagues engaged in a common mission. Managers, to their chagrin, are considered "first among equals" only as a concession to practical convenience, thus losing some of their much-touted "flexibility."
Professionals must undertake extensive theoretical training, today usually taken to mean earning, at a bare minimum, a bachelor's degree in some academic discipline from an accredited institution. Throughout their careers, they eagerly update their skills and follow developments in relevant fields.
Professionals adhere to an enforceable code of ethics and expect to be censured or expelled by their professional group if they are proved incompetent or dishonest in their practice. They also expect to be sued for malpractice if, in the judgment of their peers, they fail to adhere to standards of skill and personal probity in their work.
Today, as a result of a peculiar inversion, "professionalism" seems for many to fit the top-down military model of work-life governance. In this revised and pernicious characterization, to be professional is to dress up, shut up, and become a docile and obedient cog in the bureaucratic machine-to "go with the flow."
Fortunately, today we also have the vehicle to revive and redeem the idea of professionalism as a high calling: the "new unionism." Guild-consciousness can be rebuilt and embodied in a union of professionals that understands its antecedents and always stands solidly for the principle of a self-governing and self-disciplining body of intellectual, scientific, and scholarly practitioners.
It is now left to the administration to advance the interests of the university by cooperating with our movement, or to oppose it as a threat to their personal power. There is still hope that they will choose the former course.