Originally published in 1969 Key Profession looks at the rise of the academic profession to its influence and importance, through the history of the Association of the University of Teachers, founded in 1919 and celebrating its half-centenary in 1969. As a study of a professional organization and political pressure group concerned with salary negotiations, conditions of service, academic freedom, and public policy on higher education, it is of interest not only to social historians but also to economists, political scientists, sociologists, and all those who have at heart the search for intellectual truth, the maintenance of cultural values and the integrity of the universities. The book tries to show what part the academic profession has played in the shaping of higher education, and through it of modern society, in twentieth-century Britain.