The debate on a "critical pedagogy" for Cultural Studies has to address recent transformations--the rise of the cultural industries and the "knowledge economy", the neo-liberal expansion of the market into the public sector, the incorporation of the university into the knowledge economy, and the opening of university access to a larger percentage of young people. In the "new universities" at least, a typical student is now less focused on developing socio-political awareness than on "employability", and tends to see work in the "socially useful" public sector as less glamorous than that in the cultural and media industries. But the skills required by employers in this sector overlap substantially with those for "critical citizenship". The paper explores a pedagogy which develops the competencies needed for the workplace, while also retaining the dimension of social critique by working from students' existing cultural capital and social identities.