Shifting Alliances in the Accreditation of Higher Education: On the ...

control the criteria by which to evaluate performance. 58 Freidson then notes that ―few if
any occupations can be said to fully control their own work‖ but that ―those that come
close are called professions….‖ 59
It is generally alleged that professionals operate under an ideology quite different
from those who are forced to respond directly to market pressures. Freidson states that
―The professional ideology of service… claims devotion to a transcendent value which
infuses its specialization with a larger and putatively higher goal which may reach
beyond that of those they are supposed to serve.‖ 60 He explains that ―the institutions of
professionalism themselves support and encourage the ideal of independent service even
though they are always under some pressure to serve the needs of the state and the ruling
class.‖ 61
A slightly more cynical perspective on the development of professions is provided
by Magali Sarfatti Larson, who argues that that ―the occupations that we call professions
organized themselves to attain market power.‖ 62 Larson sees professionalization as a
process of market control, often sustained through an extensive process of training. This
training, which almost always occurs via the university, serves the dual purpose of
justifying to the general public the high status and income that are accorded to
58
Eliot Freidson, Professionalism, the Third Logic: On the Practice of Knowledge (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 2001), 12.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid., 122.
61
Ibid., 123.
62
Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley and London:
University of California Press, 1977). Cited in Richard L. Abel, ―The Rise of Professionalism,‖ British
Journal of Law and Society 6, no. 1, (Summer, 1979): 82.
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