What Future for the Professional in American Society

To be a professional in American society is somehow to be special. A profes sional is thought to have special knowledge, special skills, special resources, and special responsibilities. A professional is the object of special respect, special envy, and special demands. Individuals, and mofe recently organized groups, aspire to professional status?while that status is thought to be uniquely in the power of professionals to bind or to loose. Yet there are reasons to believe that the status of the professional in America has begun to decline in recent years, and that current trends in American so ciety will continue and even accelerate that decline, unless professionals modify their practices and their attitudes in response to these trends while maintaining a fundamental commitment to the intellectual core of the professional functions.