Vertual Enterpise(VE) is a technologically driven business simulation program in which student entrepreneurs conceive, develop and manage enterprises that trade their products and services in a global marketplace utilizing various web-based technologies. For the past eight years, Virtual Enterprise (VE) has been a growing and increasingly vital program on the campus of Kingsborough Community College. Virtual Enterprise is an interdisciplinary, technology driven simulation program in which students develop and manage global entrepreneurial enterprises in a virtual business environment. Students trade their products and services through a worldwide network of 5,000 firms in forty countries through the MarketMaker, a web-based banking, credit card and stock market developed at the City University of New York. The Virtual Enterprise course of education employs a student-centered approach towards teaching, learning, and working which provides goal oriented instruction in a simulated yet real entrepreneurial environment. This educational approach, using synchronous and asynchronous components, has revolutionized both teaching and learning by creating dynamic and assessable educational models to serve students of the 21st century.

Since its inception, the Virtual Enterprise program in New York City has stemmed from a powerful and ongoing collaboration among Kingsborough Community College, the New York City Department of Education, and the Kingsborough College Now program. This program now encompasses nearly one-half of all New York City high schools. IVE works collaboratively within the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions with a consortium of Colleges and workforce development sites.

Students often do not see the connection between what they are learning and why they should learn it. Created to bridge the gulf between the classroom and the workplace, IVE provides high school, community college and university students with the necessary skills and experience needed to become readily employable in today's job market. IVE is focusing on students from the high school level through graduate schools within the New York metropolitan area and region. Using this approach, no matter when the student chooses to enter the work force, he or she will have a sense of what that real world is all about, and be better positioned to succeed. These students will be given a level of responsibility higher than what would be given through an internship or apprenticeship, as well as the assurance that mistakes will not end their careers, but provide a valuable learning opportunity. Although the enterprise is virtual, the skills acquired are real, as the simulations are based on real-world problems.