While long part of vocational and professional training, forms of practice-based education like Work-integrated learning (WIL) arenow spreading to academic disciplines like Political Science. The pedagogical entailed in WIL is that student learning requires the theoretical knowledge and practice of both the classroom and theworkplace, and therefore pledges better employability for graduates. At the same time, this promise entails a potential threat to disciplinesthat may call into question the assumptions of market and staterelations. The question thus emerges: is it possible to do critical WIL,and what would it look like? This paper makes a normative case that a critical WIL is both desirable and possible by turning to Hanna Arendt and Richard Turner to differentiate ‘banal’ from ‘critical’education. It further argues that any ‘critical’ educationalprogramme must be based on three principles. First, students must learn about how social systems work and how to be successful inthem, but they must also learn to critically reflect on the systemsthemselves, and to do so in normative terms linked to ending domination. Second, are students required to develop both thedispositions and attributes required for working life, and those required for acting to end domination. Finally, there must besufficient institutional independence of the programme from its partner institutions to protect the critical WIL agenda. These claims are illustrated through reference to a real-world attempt toinstitutionalise WIL in a Political Studies Masters programme inSweden.