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This group, now in their late 30s, is finding it harder to find a man of equal status, fertility experts said. The trend is likely to steepen in future generations, they warned, with nearly six in 10 current students female.

The number of British women having their eggs frozen has tripled in five years, with around 4,000 such cases in total.

In simple terms, this is about an oversupply of educated women

The research, presented at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Geneva, was based on detailed interviews with women in the US and Israel. But the lead author said similar trends were likely in Britain, where women are 35 per cent more likely than men to go to university.

Prof Marcia Inhorn, a professor of anthropology at Yale, said: “There are not enough college graduates for them. In simple terms, this is about an oversupply of educated women. In China they call them ‘leftover women’.”

The former president of the Society for Medical Anthropology said the women interviewed in the study were highly successful, with 81 per cent having a degree.

She suggested some women might need to be prepared to compromise some of their standards in order to find love, but she suggested society should act to increase the number of men going into higher education.