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Much rhetoric around the construct of a work-ready graduate has focused on the technical abilities of students to fulfill the expectations of the future workplace. Efforts have been made to extend from the technical skills (e.g., skills in calculation for engineers) to include soft or behavioral skills (e.g., communication). However, within previous models of understanding of the work-ready graduate there has been little done to explore them as critical moral agents within the workplace. That is, whilst the focus has been on being work-ready, it is argued here that in current and future workplaces it is more important for university graduates to be profession-ready. Our understanding of the profession-ready graduate is characterized by the ability to demonstrate capacities in critical thinking and reflection, and to have an ability to navigate the ethical challenges and shape the organizational culture of the future workplace.

This chapter aims to explore a movement of thinking away from simply aspiring to develop work-ready graduates, expanding this understanding to argue for the development of profession-ready graduates. The chapter begins with an exploration of the debates around the characteristics of being work-ready, and through a consideration of two professional elements: professional identity and critical moral agency, argues for a reframing of work-readiness towards professional-readiness. The chapter then considers the role of work-integrated learning (WIL) in being able to support the development of the profession-ready graduate.

Social media, network capabilities, and digital communication technologies are changing the nature of work for individuals in WIL programs; further challenging the connections between industries and universities in their efforts to ensure individuals are work ready. However, digital technologies have provided new resources to help individuals socialize into the workplace and develop new skills for meeting the challenges of the information age that will also impact on how they get a job, and then do that job. The current literature on WIL, organizational behavior, and remote working, provides a theoretical framework for identifying the key points on the transitions experienced by individuals through WIL using the prism of social media, digital technologies, and the changes in work culture through remote working. Key issues in relation to transition are illustrated using two examples: one French and the other Canadian. The French study examines the effects of social media and digital technologies on individuals in WIL programs in relation to developing work readiness skills and communicating with supervisors and coworkers. The Canadian example examines the challenges internship students face when their workplace is predicated on remote working. The impact of social media, digital and communication technologies present new challenges for fulfilling the objectives of WIL programs and ensuring students are ready for work now and in the future.

Duchamp caused a revolution in the art of the twentieth century with the readymade concept, and simultaneously he opened Pandora's Box, which converted art into a simulation and made it dependent on discursive practices. This degenerated into a deconstructive vulgate when, from the 1960s onwards, an ‘aesthetic of banality’ was accentuated and the media institutionalized the ‘guerrilla’ between the practices and the discourses. Art ‘wrecked’ in a regime of hyper-reality of the image, and the art paradigms and criteria shifted from aesthetics to the law of the financial markets. At the same time, the proliferation of coexisting cultural ideas and a revolving cultural miscegenation ended up splitting the kingdom of the art. In the art world today, there is a cleavage between artists: on one side, the adepts to the heteronomy (a line that was born with ready-made products), those who, following dominant rules, work for the market and the organizations; on the other side, those, more passionate, for whom art is a hermeneutics for self-knowledge. Meanwhile, Picasso's aura returns to the art scene, in a panorama that until now was adverse to him.

The chapter discusses the question of social justice in social science research by problematizing the researcher-research content relationship and its guiding principle framework Science-Society-Me. With a focus on early career researchers, the author draws on her own PhD research experience to highlight the social justice tension inherent in the normative approaches and methods for selecting research topic, collecting data and relating with research participants, and analyzing and interpreting data especially in empirical research with fellow human beings. Drawing on the theory of affect, the chapter centralizes the position, biography and experience of the researcher, and the relationship between the researcher and the research participants to balance out the privileged (power) position of ‘science’ and ‘society’ in the current framework. To this end, I make two ontological and methodological adjustment recommendations: (1) Relocating the space of research from a fixed and exclusive ‘location’ of science theories, methods, concepts etc., to the space of daily life experience and interaction, requiring a compassionate approach to research, and thus the second recommendation; (2) Developing long-term, inclusive and equal relationships with research participants augmented by constant reflexivity – as including the biographies and experiences of the researcher and the research participant – as well as political reflexivity.

Canadian postsecondary institutions are increasing their emphasis on internationalization, sending many students abroad and welcoming students from far and wide onto their campuses. Also, Canadian organizations and multinational corporations have an increasingly diverse workforce. These trends require postsecondary institutions to prepare students adequately for this global village of the 21st century. At the University of Victoria’s (UVic’s) Co-operative Education Program and Career Services, we have created a strategy to help develop global ready graduates using a framework derived from Earley and Ang’s work on cultural intelligence (Earley & Ang, 2003). Cultural intelligence (CQ) is defined as an individual’s capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008). A recently completed research project to measure the development of cultural intelligence of students participating in the UVic’s CANEU-COOP program formed the impetus for developing this CQ strategy (McRae, Ramji, Lu, & Lesperance, 2016). The strategy involves a framework that includes curriculum for inbound international students, outbound work-integrated learning (WIL) students, and all students preparing to work in diverse workplaces. In addition to developing specific curricula for these audiences, the strategy includes tools to assess the intercultural competencies that students gain during their WIL experiences, as well as helping students use these competencies to transition to the 21st century global village. This strategy and the Intercultural Competency Development Curriculum (ICDC) are discussed in this chapter.