Professionalism perceived more conventionally is an occupational set of virtues or “essence”, while a critical conceptualisation of the notion is related to political dimension that makes it subject to social and power relations. Recent discussions on “professionalism” in literature while revealing the complexity of “professionalism” seem to highlight the political aspect of the concept and emphasise the determining role of external power discourses. Seeing “professionalism” as being socially constructed but with a more visible focus on the role of teachers, this paper explores the concept in the contemporary higher education context using the interaction between “agency” and “structure” as an analytical lens. In doing so, the paper argues for a potential of understanding “professionalism” as a “social contract”: it is based on a more reciprocal relationship between university teacher agency and their social discourse.