HOW do you find the perfect partner? Study their diplomas. Marriages that make the grade are built on equal educational backgrounds, according to a scientific survey.

University dons have discovered that it is not class nor money that best form a long-lasting relationship but your schooling. An analysis of thousands of couples across Britain found that 60% of marriages were between couples of similar scholastic ability.

The research suggests that a meeting of the minds like Chris Martin, the Coldplay frontman, and Gwyneth Paltrow, the Hollywood actress, is a marriage made in academia if not heaven.

While he got a first in ancient history at University College London, she studied the history of art at the University of California.

Similarly Zadie Smith, the award-winning novelist who wrote White Teeth, met her husband Nick Laird while she was studying at Cambridge University. He was editing an anthology of poetry and became her first publisher.

Laird later wrote a poem about her before becoming a lawyer. He has now emerged as a highly acclaimed writer himself with a volume of poetry and a first novel, Utterly Monkey.

But the research may mean that other couples — such as Jude Law who was bullied as a teacher’s son at a London comprehensive and Sienna Miller, who went to Heathfield, a £20,000-a-year girls’ boarding school in Berkshire — may have to work harder in their relationships.

Economists who carried out the research, based on more than 3,000 couples, produced a set of so-called mating equations to calculate who will marry whom.

They found that women of medium educational level were 22 times more likely than women of low education to marry a highly educated man.

“The educational system can be seen as a marriage market with students searching among other students for a mate,” say the Dutch researchers in a report being published this week in the Review of Economics of the Household.

The research was based on 3,070 couples who had at least one child and who were born between 1940 and 1970. Detailed data on their education, social background and other factors were pulled together and analysed at the University of Amsterdam.

The results show that education is the key determining factor in forming a relationship: 59% of couples have the same levels of education, while in 29% of marriages the man has a higher levels of education. In only 12% is the woman more educated.

The report says that the number of men who marry women with a lower education was at a maximum among men born in the 1950s. Since then it has been declining.

The results also show that the age gap between men and women in a relationship has risen from one year among those born in the 1950s to three years. Just why is not clear.

The report shows too that education also affects the speed with which couples get married and have children. Lesser educated women wait longer after finishing education than more educated women.

Paula Hall, a counsellor with Relate, the relationship guidance service, agreed with the findings. She said: “If I look at clients I’m working with in their fifties and sixties, the man may well be educated to a higher standard than the woman, whereas younger couples are more likely to be equal.

“The market is wider. Once upon a time the top Oxford graduate would have married the girl who came top in her typing exams.

“Expectations are different. In previous generations a woman’s objective was to get married and bring up children so an education wasn’t particularly relevant. You would only work until children came along. Whereas now that’s not the expectation.”

Tracey Cox, a former women’s magazine editor and author of Hot Relationships, also believes a compatible level of education is important. “Opposites attract for sex, but they don’t generally work long term,” she said.

Additional reporting: Holly Watt

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating