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During the past decade, some sections of post compulsory educational institutions have expressed increasing interest in work as a site of learning. Whilst the debates surrounding work-based learning are not new, the use of work as curriculum in its various forms impacts on individual learners, workplaces and universities in different ways. As work based degrees and workplace courses proliferate and more and more universities establish work based learning units, these innovations turn the spotlight on changes in the university itself. The university emerges as a workplace, where work outside the university becomes the curriculum of academic work based learning. The authors present their own case of work based learning as they implemented an industry-generic work based learning degree in the community services industry (Australia) and an employer-specific work based learning degree in education reform (Iran). In trying to permeate the ‘gates’ of the university in an increasingly corporatised climate (Australia) and in a climate of reformist political change (Iran), the authors encountered countless dilemmas. Implementation of work-based learning degrees challenged hierarchies of knowledge, traditional notions of academic and vocational knowledge and learning, and also transformed the role of the academics involved. The authors describe the forces that shaped their own learning. This analysis reflects the internal and external relationships, possibilities and limitations that arose from the activities of the Work-based Learning Unit at the University of Western Sydney Nepean.