The National Association of College & University Entrepreneurs, abbreviated to and operating as NACUE, is a national organisation in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
that promotes
entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
amongst students in
higher education
Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completi ...
and
further education
Further education (often abbreviated FE) in the United Kingdom and Ireland is education in addition to that received at secondary school, that is distinct from the higher education (HE) offered in universities and other academic institutions. I ...
. It supports student enterprise societies at colleges and universities, through its existing network of 240 enterprise societies, as well as assisting new societies.
NACUE was founded in 2009, bringing together twelve enterprise societies at universities across the country. It became a charity in 2011, by which time its network consisted of 70 societies. At this stage, the government set an aim of having an enterprise society at every university in the country, with the network growing to 130 societies by 2013, almost 200 by 2014, and over 240 by 2015.
NACUE also organises events throughout the year. NACUE's largest event is the annual Student Enterprise Conference; the most recent conference, in March 2017,at the University of Lincoln. Other member institutions who have hosted in the last seven years include UCL, Liverpool John Moores and jointly at Sheffield Hallam Universities and The Sheffield College. The Student Enterprise Conference is Europe's largest conference dedicated to student enterprise.
NACUE's CEO is
Holly Knower
''Ilex'' (), or holly, is a genus of over 570 species of flowering plants in the family Aquifoliaceae, and the only living genus in that family. ''Ilex'' has the most species of any woody dioecious angiosperm genus. The species are evergreen o ...
, while its chairman is
John MacIntyre
John Macintyre or Mcintyre FRSE (2 October 1857 – 29 October 1928) was a Scottish doctor who set up the world's first radiology department at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, in Glasgow.