The peace process was supposed to encourage closer relations between both parts of Ireland, and closer North-South co-operation in education was one of the aims of the Good Friday agreement.
Yet student flows across the Border have declined sharply ever since the IRA ceasefires five years ago and are likely to fall again this year.
Students are a pragmatic group of people who take decisions that are economically rational. Promoting good relations in this island does not feature in their decision on where to study.
Specific factors created the boom in cross-Border movement in the decade up to 1995-96, when the number of new Southern students heading North shot up from 163 to 1,359, bringing total enrolments to more than 3,000.
Over the same period the number of new Northern students enrolling in the Republic rose from 107 to 587, according to figures published by the Department of Education for Northern Ireland. Total enrolments peaked at just over 1,700.
But the special circumstances that created the boom have changed, and the cross-Border flow is drying up. Since the peak, the number of Northern first-years in the Republic has tumbled by 70 per cent.
Part of this is easy to explain. The Northern Department of Education decided that from September 1996 students attending private colleges in the South would no longer be eligible for grants covering fees and maintenance, thus saving £33.7 million per year.
At that time, 900 of the 1,700 Northern students enrolled in the Republic were at private colleges, so the drop of 303 registering in the South fits well with the closing of this financial tap.
But this does not tell the whole story, as North-South new enrolments fell by 243 in 1995, a year before the decision on private colleges came into effect. This may be because many Northern applicants had relatively low grades and could not get places in the face of stiff competition from Southern school-leavers.
Those who did get places were probably top achievers seeking places on high-demand courses such as pharmacy, law, veterinary, dentistry and medicine.
One argument a few years ago was that the abolition of fees in the Republic, coupled with their introduction in the United Kingdom, would promote Southward movement. Yet the flow fell again last year, and there is no indication from the Central Admissions Office of any jump this autumn. Applications are about normal at 1,400 but most of these are probably taking out insurance against the possibility of failing to get a place in the North or Britain.
Since its peak, the number of new Southern students enrolling in the North has tumbled by half to 681. This will almost certainly fall again next month because the number of applications was down by 22 per cent.
The number of applications from the Republic to Britain has also fallen by around 17 per cent, which suggests that the new tuition fees, coupled with the heavy cost of studying across the water, has been a deterrent.
It has also become easier for Irish students to find a place at home. According to the Higher Education Authority, the number of degree places has risen by nearly 17 per cent, from about 95,000 in 1995 to a projected 111,000 last year. With a small decline in school-leavers, it was slightly easier for local students to get in.
It seems students are now more likely to stay at home. Those from the South are no longer going North because it is becoming more expensive to do so and because they can get places at home. Diverting the flow from the South means more places in Northern colleges are now available for the lower-achieving local school-leavers. This seems to be confirmed by official figures which show that 67.4 per cent of Northern Ireland students found places at home last year, the highest proportion for 13 years.
"It is very sad to see a decline in the present climate where we would want to see flows in both directions," commented Queen's University Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Prof Bob Cormack. He noted that the reduced flows could be a result of the increasing costs of education. His fears are heightened by statistics showing that the number of people over 21 entering higher education at all has begun to fall.