professional
(noun)
A person whose occupation is highly skilled, salaried, and requires high educational attainment.
Examples of professional in the following topics:
-
The Upper Middle Class
- According to the rubric laid out by sociologist Max Weber, the upper-middle class consists of well-educated professionals with graduate degrees and comfortable incomes.
- According to his definition, the middle class consists of an upper-middle class, made up of professionals distinguished by exceptionally high educational attainment and high economic security; and a lower-middle class, consisting of semi-professionals.
- There is some debate over what exactly the term "upper-middle class" means, but in academic models, the term generally applies to highly educated, salaried professionals whose work is largely self-directed.
- The U.S. upper-middle class consists mostly of white-collar professionals who have a high degree of autonomy in their work.
- Many members of the upper-middle class have graduate degrees, such as law, business, or medical degrees, which are often required for professional occupations.
-
Occupation
- The upper-middle class is sometimes referred to as the "professional class," pointing to the dominance of highly compensated, highly educated professionals in this social tier.
- High educational attainment is generally a pre-requisite for entering high status professional occupations.
- Having a professional occupation is associated with being a member of the upper-middle or upper class.
- To enter the professions, a person usually must hold a professional degree.
- Examples of professional degrees include JDs for law, MDs for medicine, and MBAs for business.
-
Teachers: Employees and Instructors
- In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional qualifications or credentials from a university or college.
- These professional qualifications may include the study of pedagogy, the science of teaching.
- Teachers, like other professionals, may have to continue their education after they qualify, a process known as continuing professional development.
-
Family and Gender Issues
- Social expectations that women manage childcare contribute to the gender pay gap and other limitations in professional life for women.
- Inequalities in professional success are sometimes attributed to women taking maternity leave after having children.
-
The Importance of Paid and Unpaid Work
- An example of an internship is when a college student shadows a professional member of the career they are striving for to learn how to achieve their goals.
- An internship is a system of on-the-job training for white-collar and professional careers.
- Internships for professional careers are similar to apprenticeships for trade and vocational jobs.
-
Lobbyists and Special Interest Groups
- Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interests hire well-connected professional advocates, often lawyers, to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress.
- While the bulk of lobbying happens by business and professional interests who hire paid professionals, some lobbyists represent non-profits and work pro bono for issues in which they are personally interested.
-
Ethics
- Sociologists also have professional ethical principles they follow.
- Sociologists who manipulate their data are ostracized and can have their memberships in professional organizations revoked.
- But the disclosure of conflicts of interest is recommended by most professional organizations and many academic journals.
-
Career Development: Vocation and Identity
- In common parlance, a vocation refers to one's professional line of work or career, such as being a doctor.
-
Role Conflict
- An example of someone experiencing role conflict by way of work/family conflict is the professional who is also a parent and must decide whether to work an extra hour at the office or attend a meeting at his child's school.
- The most obvious example of role conflict is work/family conflict, or the conflict one feels when pulled between familial and professional obligations.
-
Norms and Sanctions
- While it is usually social convention to show up in some manner of (usually professional) dress to a job interview, this is most likely not the case for someone interviewing to be a nude model.
- We say that the norm that governs wearing professional rather than casual attire to a job interview is a folkway because its violation results in lesser degree of social sanction—the development of a preference rather than stigmatization.