Second “Entreprendre pour la vie étudiante” contest

The CPU (Conférence des Présidents d’Universités, Conference of University Presidents) and the AVUF (Association des villes universitaires de France, Association of University Cities in France) have decided to organise another “Entreprendre pour la vie étudiante” (Start a business for student life) contest. The contest is open to any legal person, regardless of its status (start-up, company, association), and aims at encouraging the creation of offers of service for students and contribute to a vibrant life on campuses and other university cities.

The first edition of this contest had gathered about sixty applications and contributed to promote 14 initiatives in 2019. After such encouraging results, the CPU and AVUF chose to start a new contest to boost the creation of new services contributing to student life, to improve such services and give them a better visibility.

Student life as field and scope

What is usually referred to in France as “student life” is a set of services in relation with student life, external to the training course and study programme, but which highly contributes to the success of the student by ensuring material, social and human well-being. Such services are generally related to access to culture, sport and community life, but also to accommodation, catering, health and social assistance. As such, the contest initiated by the CPU and AVUF aims to improve student life as a whole, at campus level, but also beyond: at local and city level.

A contest for entrepreneurship

The “Entreprendre pour la vie étudiante” contest is organised in collaboration with Banque Populaire and many other partners: CROUSes, the Education-Formation press agency, the Pépite network (network of students-entrepreneurs) and the network of university vice-presidents in each French university (VP entrepreneurship, VP students and VP campus life). The contest is open to “any private legal entity, regardless of its legal status”, meaning that start-ups, companies or associations can compete. However, participants “must reside in France” and “their projects must take place on French territory”.

Submitted projects must aim to improve student life and can cover various fields: transport, international mobility, housing, culture, leisure, commitment, solidarity and citizenship, health and well-being, sport, student employment, professional insertion, internships and guidance, fight against discrimination, equality and diversity, etc.

Promoting selected projects

The call for applications was launched on 23 March, with a deadline on 7 May 2021. The jury is made up of the contest’s partners, and will meet in May for an initial pre-selection of projects. In June, the jury will confer and present the results of projects selected.

The selection is based on various criteria, such as:

- the general interest of the project and its compliance with the competition theme;

- the degree of innovation;

- the capacity to implement or experiment the project in relation with a territory and/or a higher education institution during the second semester of 2021;

- the project’s reproducibility, in the long term, for the benefit of all campuses in France.

Organisers of the contest are committed to making the winners’ projects as widely known as possible by promoting them and referring them to the university community and university cities.

To know more: 

- Press release

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