A recent trade mission to China led by Education Minister Ruairí Quinn focused on attracting Chinese students to Ireland's third-level and graduate programmes, an area of potentially strong growth for Ireland.

An overseas education is considered a great bonus and, while Chinese third- level institutions are reforming and improving, blue-chip foreign universities and colleges in the US, Australia, Britain and Ireland have a strong appeal to Chinese students.

Which is why education experts are scratching their heads at the Council of Graduate Schools’ report, based on application data from 276 US schools, that after seven consecutive years of double-digit increases, the number of Chinese applications to graduate programmes in the US this spring fell an unexpected 5 per cent.

Dual degree
Debra W Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, described the drop as "disturbing". "This is a post-9/11 kind of drop," Ms Stewart told the Chronicle of Higher Education .

International graduate applications rose by just 1 per cent, the smallest rise in eight years, and this was driven by the strength of the Indian market, which rose 20 per cent.

Overseas universities in the developed countries need strong foreign student numbers to offset falling student numbers at home.

One possible reason for the drop is the increase in the number of joint degree and dual degree programmes offered in China by US universities, which gives Chinese graduate students the opportunity to get a US degree while staying home.

This is an area that Irish institutions such as University College Dublin have actively pursued too.