The corpus of existing curricular practices relating to the applied degree provides some opportunity to re-visit the Mission of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATS) and transcend local and situated boundaries to consider the relatedness of what members of CAATS do well, what new activities they should be considering and how they face the challenges. The search for a comprehensive understanding of the applied degree has long eluded administrators, academics and policy makers. The inadequacy of any sustained analysis of the conditions and consequences of the applied degree is not due to the often attributed phlegmatic unwillingness of mainstream thinking to grapple with fundamental implications, financial or otherwise, but rather to a perniciously cemented resistance to any knowledge that challenges the privileged ethos of institutionalized hierarchies of power. Acknowledging the intellectual limits of orthodox thinking, a more critical analysis however seeks to make sense of the often ignored relationship between colleges and universities from various vantage points notably the pedagogy of praxis, dialectics of discipline and the primacy of partnerships. The author talks about the applied degree as the pedagogy of praxis, dialectics of discipline and the primacy of partnerships. The author offers some measures which suggest that Colleges would do well to work together in a host of different College and University partnerships according to aspects of the dominant ideologies that have been well buried in institutional practices. (Contains 3 figures.)