Today, our students must cope with two seemingly contradictory tasks: they have to write an independent academic thesis and they have to prepare for the diverse writing of modern working life. In the article, I argue that it is possible for higher education to unite the two tasks. The solution is to add a meta-perspective to academic writing instruction. This perspective is a tool that the students should appropriate when learning to write some of the common genres at the university. Later on, they can use this tool when learning to write various new workplace genres.