ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a wide variety of problems touching the status and social functions of members of the faculties of institutions of higher learning. It discusses a group of the problems not in order of their immediate practical urgency or controversiality, but of their common relevance to certain rather general considerations, undertaken in professional academic capacity, of the social role, status, functions, and conditions of development of the professions in modern Western civilization. Considerations derived from, and playing an important part in technical sociological research will be combined with those involved in personal convictions and in ideals for the development of universities and their functions. Attention may be called in particular to one field which lies on the borderline of technical sociological competence, and the personal convictions and standards of the profession and society as a whole.
