In this article, the authors show how higher education converted to occupational education--called professional education to distinguish it from lower-level vocational training. The vocationalization process has always had dissenters, those who complain that the dominant focus on vocational goals undermines education's moral, civic, and intellectual purposes, a point of view that the authors suggest has become marginalized over time. More active forms of dissent, they argue, have come from those concerned about the inequities built into vocationalism, the differentiation of higher education institutions by occupational purposes with inequitably provided resources. A different kind of debate has occurred around what constitutes a genuine professional education, one that is inextricably linked to the vocationalism of formal schooling. The article concludes by arguing that vocationalism is now so deeply embedded in American higher education that it cannot be wished away and that reforms need to focus on ways to integrate vocational purposes with broader civic, intellectual, and moral goals.