Working the knowledge game? Universities and corporate organizations in partnership

As a result of changing conditions of funding, emanating in a sense of crisisabout viability and the need to find new sources of revenue, many universities inAustralia and elsewhere are moving into new areas of application in novel partnershipswith corporate organizations, to deliver 'work-based learning'. But what may promise toresolve a fiscal crisis some times can generate practices which prove deeply unsettling for thecontext in which they are embedded. In this article we explore the extent to which newmodes of work-based learning represent a legitimation crisis for universities as well asexploring their implications for the corporatepartners. Data from an ongoing study ofsuch a partnership between the ABC Co, a global financial industry firm, and a largeuniversity dedicated to forging practice-based relationships with industry, are drawn on.The conclusions that we reach suggest that the reality of the new knowledge age of workbasedlearning is, perhaps, rather more a question of impression management, jointlynegotiated on both sides, than a brave new world.