Irish school principal speaks on the country's higher education

Philip Nolan, president of Maynooth University in Ireland. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Ireland is often dwarfed by its neighbor on the other side of the Irish Sea in terms of providing higher education abroad for the Chinese. The UK is the second largest destination only after the US for Chinese students to study overseas.

A small country with less than five million people, Ireland somehow has the highest participation rate of higher education among the European countries.

We talked to Philip Nolan, president of the National University of Ireland Maynooth, known as Maynooth University, on what the country's higher education has to offer to international students.

Can you briefly introduce the country's higher education institutions to us?

There are seven universities and 14 institutes of technology. All the seven universities are ranked in the top 600 in the world. The whole system enrolls about a quarter million students, and 110,000 of them are in universities. That's a lot of students for a country of less than five million people.

We know that Ireland is also regarded as the "Silicon Valley of Europe". What are the strongest majors in Irish institutions?

Ireland is very strong in information communication technology (ICT). All of the US and global major companies in ICT and pharmaceuticals have a base in Ireland. Science and engineering are of course very strong. But those companies need a very wide variety of skills. So we have a very broad strength in including business, law and social sciences.