This article seeks to compare the characteristics of the academic profession as described historically by Perkin in 1969 against the definitions of a profession derived from the published views of sociologists and others. It then measures the position of the academic community today against these definitions: a common range of professional tasks and competences, representation by a membership-led organisation, participation in institutional governance, a role in determining professional development and conditions of service, powers of self-regulation, and exclusive control of the knowledge and expertise it professes. The article goes on to analyse how the characteristics of twenty-first century academic life measure up to these provisions and concludes that in many ways they now fall substantially short to the extent that in a strict sense it is no longer possible to claim that academics belong to an academic profession.