Markets vs. professions

sions is under siege. Not just their performance but also their claim to distinct expertise, the very core of professional legitimacy, has come under withering 1⁄2re. Skepticism is particularly leveled at professional claims that the public interest is being served. Lawyers now routinely expect denigration for their professional af1⁄2liation, even from other attorneys. Physicians are not only challenged by the proponents of ‘alternative medicine,’ but face patients armed with all kinds of medical knowledge obtained through the Internet. The prevalence of ‘emergency’ teaching credentials in school classrooms calls into question the value of professional teacher training. The list goes on. Despite the speci1⁄2city of these claims to the particular circumstances of one or another professional 1⁄2eld, these challenges circulate within a larger current of thought that is deeply skeptical of the value of the professional organization of work. The prevalence of the notion that the market is self-regulating and morally self-suf1⁄2cient has cast doubt on the public value of an individual’s lengthy and expensive induction into a professional guild–into its monopoly over esoteric knowledge within an occupational domain, particularly over the recruiting, training, and licensing of personnel. Yet it is precisely within this context that professional organization, and especially the academic basis of the professional career, matters more than ever. The bruising experience of the 1990s boom-and-bust in the 1⁄2nancial markets glaringly revealed just how important professional acumen and integrity are to the viability of the marketplace. Professionalism, it turns out, provides a public value essential to modern societies. The real issue is how to promote and ensure the viability of genuine professionalism amid highly challenging conditions. The academic institutions in which professionals begin their apprenticeships are key. Professional schools are the single institutional context that pro

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• The History and Theory of Empires

  Open Access•Philip Pomper•History and Theory•2005

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