An occupation that requires specific training, proven knowledge, and specialized abilities (e.g., medical doctor, lawyer). The professions have established highly independent communities, are generally afforded secure social status, and rely on state power to regulate diverse occupational dynamics through licensing and other work guidelines. They can arguably be contrasted in important ways with disciplines (see DISCIPLINE), which also generate occupational positions and discrete, self-regulated communities, but reveal closer ties to the university than to the state. Certain aspects of the modern university, however, complicate any clean contrast between the disciplines and the professions. For instance, as students, parents, departments, and university officials seek “financial justification for this $200,000 investment in Jane,” Jane herself may begin to sense pre-professional pressure. Discussions concerning job placement, starting salaries, and “practical skills” imparted through academic effort will be difficult to avoid. When half the students enrolled in GER 345 (“German Idealism in the Nineteenth Century”) seek to join corporate law offices, banking institutions, or hospitals within a decade of graduating, how does one meaningfully distinguish the so-called disciplinary project of Germanistik from the professional/client relationships that characterize the professions? Does the former undergo a mystical transmutation into the latter when nineteen-year-old Jane (and/or her professor) isn’t looking? Must the German Department attract in perpetuity a certain number of Janes in order to perpetuate itself? And if indeed Jane gets a strong letter of recommendation to law school from the instructor of GER 345, is it possible that Jane’s ability to perform to the (alien, arbitrary, and possibly tedious) standards of advanced disciplinary German Studies has effectively served as nothing more or less than an index (or proxy?) for her capacities complacently to serve a constructive role in the endless document review that characterizes the discovery phase of complex corporate litigation? The neoliberal university presents numerous conundrums of this sort.