ABSTRACT
The major thrust toward appropriation of the professional title, toward recognition of the discipline as a profession, presumably comes from men located outside the college and university campuses. Attention has been focused upon these two paths to claimed professionalism and diverted from more recent phenomena, such as is represented by chemistry's emergence from university departments into the professional arena. It is important to scrutinize this newer kind of claimant to professional status because the conditions un der which the claim is made are different; so also are the attendant consequences and problems. The trend is also affected by what has been happening in, and to, the university departments. The evolution of non-research universities into moderately good, or even excellent, research institutions has been more subtle. Legitimization is far easier than for occupations coming to the universities from the outside. Industry and government abet the universities’ position, sometimes wittingly and sometimes unwittingly.
