British men and women with university degrees or higher education qualifications are twice as likely to have adulterous affairs as their less educated contemporaries who left school with low-level qualifications or none at all, researchers have discovered.

As the Government launches its crusade to create a more qualified workforce, the questionable moral consequences of advanced learning were revealed in evidence from the most extensive investigation of sexual behaviour in Britain.The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles -- based on interviews with 19,000 adults found 12 per cent of married or cohabiting men with good academic qualifications admitted to an adulterous affair in the previous five years. This compared with 5.7 per cent of the men without degrees or good exam results.Women admitted less adultery than the men, but they too were more likely to have had an affair outside marriage if they had done well at school or university. Women working away from home were the most likely to stray.

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