The national Networked University of Craft Science and Craft Education (NUCE) has been established among the Finnish universities with the Ministry of Education in 1999. NUCE encompasses four universities offering studies in craft science and craft education, the University of Turku ja University of Joensuu and Åbo Akademi (University of Vaasa). Additional co-operators in the project in developing digital networked courses have been the Tampere Technical University ( Institute of Fiber Material Science ) and the University of Art and Design Helsinki (Textile Art & Design).

Craft science and craft education are rather small fields and the Universities offering these studies are scattered around Finland. The purpose of NUCE is to strenghten the co-operation between these Universities in order to develop high quality teaching and studying and share the expertise among researchers in these fields. The focus in NUCE is especially in e-learning, aiming at flexible studying between the cooperating Universities.

A short-term future aim in this project is to extend NUCE to the Nordic countries (NordFo) and to our Baltic co-operators, universities in Estonia (Socrates) and Latvia (Socrates).