If mutual understanding in the North and Republic of Ireland depends on the cross-border flows of students, then the recent evidence is depressing. As the personal cost of a higher education rises it would seem that students are seeking to stay close to home. In 1985, slightly fewer than 500 Northern students were studying in the Republic of Ireland.

This rose to more than 1,500 by 1995 (with about 3,800 heading to British universities), but by 1998 this figure had dipped below 1,000 (with again about 3,800 heading to British institutions).

In 1995, 62 per cent of first-year entrants from Northern Ireland found a place in Queen's or the University of Ulster. By 1998 this had increased to 67 per cent of the entrance cohort. In 1995, about 4,300 Southern first year students were accepted by British and Northern Ireland universities; by 1998, this had declined to about 2,900.

The latest figures for 1999 entrants from UCAS, the British equivalent of the CAO, reveal that there has been an 18 per cent decline in Southern first-year students heading for British and Northern Ireland univer. Some years ago, Bob Osborne, Tony Gallagher and I, in the Centre for Research on Higher Education (a joint QUB/UU Centre), calculated that, in Northern Ireland, we would need an extra 12,000 places to match the level of provision of higher education places in Scotland and 5,700 to match Welsh provision.

This serious under-supply of places forces many students to leave Northern Ireland in order to obtain a place in a higher education institution.

This was recognised by the Dearing Report on higher education. Based on our research, that report recommended a substantial expansion of places in Northern Ireland. In this last year, the Department of Education for Northern Ireland agreed to fund a very limited expansion of places in the two Northern universities.

A somewhat similar undersupply of places was evident in the South in the mid-1990s with a concomitant outflow of students. However, there has been a 17 per cent increase in higher education places since 1995.

The expansion of places both in the North and in the Republic is catering for students who increasingly want to stay close to home. In the North, further expansion is clearly required. The 18-year-old population has been growing since 1995 and has now probably peaked, but with little evidence that it will decline in the next few years.

In the Republic, however, it looks as if the 18-year-old cohort will decline quite significantly over the next five years. There is a considerable need to offer the opportunity of a higher education to "non-traditional" entrants and those with qualifications other than A-Levels and Leaving Certificates. Current levels of provision and demography would suggest that institutions in the Republic are better placed to deliver on the EU objective of social inclusion.

The cost of a higher education has been switched, in recent years, from the State to the individual. In the North this has been quite dramatic ... if not traumatic!

For new entrants in 1999, a fee of £1,025 per year will be charged. However, this levy is means-tested and students from low-income families will pay little or nothing of this fee.

A national of a European Union country will be treated in exactly the same manner. Students from the Republic who applied to British and Northern Ireland universities should have already received the appropriate forms to claim this fee dispensation.

I am told further assistance will be provided by

European Team, Student Support Division 1, 2F Area B, Mowden Hall, Darlington DL3 9BG, UK.

No maintenance grants are now available to British and Northern Ireland higher education students ... hence the trauma! Students are expected to take out loans from the Students' Loan Company. Quite substantial additional support is being provided through Access Funds, administered by the universities, with funding from government.

These funds are available to all EU students. Already, Northern students are graduating with substantial levels of debt. Social equity suggests this might be reasonable, since graduates earn substantially more than those with lesser qualifications.

On the other hand, these studies were based on a period when "graduateness" was restricted to an elite.

How will graduates fare in this new world of mass higher education? Will graduates continue to command a substantial salary differential over those with other types of qualifications?

In 1996, fees were abolished in the Republic. It is generally recognised in Europe and North America that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a state to sustain a mass higher education system without fees.

Gossip suggests that farmers caused substantial problems in the previous means-tested regime. PAYE people, I heard, became somewhat irritated at the fees levied on their offspring.

The Department, on its website, describes it as "widespread concern about the equity of the student grant schemes and the regressive impact of income tax relief for covenants".

(It might be interesting to know how the European Team in Darlington are dealing with returns from such-like folks.) In the North, and in Britain in general, my own view is that we have funded the middle classes in the education of their children through grammar schools and universities, while the education of the rest has been a wasteland -poor provision, lack of status, little or no financial support.

Now that we have mass higher education, the working class have to pay for it!

The ITs in the Republic have done a better job and been better supported by the state than the Further Education Colleges and their students in the North. Despite this, border colleges in Derry, Enniskillen and Newry (for example) have substantial numbers of Southern students. These student movements are not recorded in the above figures but should be the subject of future research.

As the peace process rolls (or perhaps stumbles) forward we should be looking seriously at how to build mutual understanding.

Belfast and Dublin are exciting (but very different) cities; the same might apply to Limerick, Galway, Cork, Coleraine, Armagh and Derry. Up to 1968, the majority of students leaving Northern Ireland to study travelled south rather than to Britain.

These students were mainly Protestants leaving to study in Trinity College.

In Northern Ireland the upper-middle classes tended to send their sons (as it tended to be) to universities outside Northern Ireland. Queen's was a university for the lower echelons of the Protestant establishment in the North, except for the professions - medicine and law in particular.

The North-South flow of students is to be encouraged. The understanding that can result from three or four years of study in a Northern or Southern city is "collateral for the future". Or so it to be hoped. My only worry is where are the "voices" of all those Protestants who spent four years of their young lives in Dublin in the 1950s and 1960s?