For the first ever, more Cypriots pursued third-level education at home than went abroad, latest figures from the statistical services shows.

For the academic year of 2009/2010 more Cypriots stayed put for their university education, with 21,095 choosing Cyprus institutions while 20,051 went abroad.

In the previous year more Cypriots chose universities abroad (21,473) than at home (20,221), even though the reversal trend began around a decade ago.

Home-grown education has slowly been catching up something which the statistical services say is the “result of the further development of the university level of education on the island”.

In 2002/2003 there were 35 public and private institutions in Cyprus with a total of 18,272 students, 5,008 of whom were foreign.

In 2009/10 there were 42 institutions with a total of 32,233 students, Cypriots and foreigners.

Cyprus has three state-funded universities and three private universities all of which have been steadily growing.

The universities receiving state support are the Open University, the University of Cyprus (UCY) and the Cyprus University of Technology (TEPAK).

The private universities are Frederick, European University and the University of Nicosia.

There are also numerous colleges.

In 2009/10 most university students chose to study in private institutions (not just universities) with 70.1 per cent going private and the rest public. Slightly more males enrolled comprising 53.9 per cent versus 46.1 per cent for females.

Most graduates in Cyprus studied Business and Administration (42.9 per cent) followed by Teacher Training and Education (11.4 per cent), Social and Behavioural Sciences (6.0 per cent) Humanities (5.4 per cent), Computing (4.7 per cent) and Medical (4.6 per cent) among other courses.

Abroad, the most popular fields of study were Business and Administration (12.5 per cent); Medical (11.3 per cent); Engineering (8.7 per cent); Social and Behavioural Sciences (8.6 per cent); Humanities (8.2 per cent).

Those studying law, the arts, and teacher training fell somewhere on the 6 per cent spectrum in descending order of preference.

Cypriots studying abroad are continuing to favour Greece and the UK.

Over the past ten years Cypriots students in Greece increased from 38.9 per cent (1989/1990) of all Cypriots studying abroad to 51.2 per cent in 2009/10.

Over the same period there has been a smaller increase in the UK share going from 25.2 per cent to 39.8 per cent while the US and Western European countries have fallen in preference. The proportion of students in the US have shown a significant drop from 20.2 per cent in 1989/1990 to just 1.8 per cent in 2009/10.

The state paid on average around €13,000 per student in public university education.