One in five UK students were not able to study the right subjects to prepare for a degree that interested them, according to this report by UCAS, which assessed data from more than 27,000 first and second year university students in the UK in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Ucas says two in five students at university said they would have made better choices if they had had better information and advice at school. This was most apparent for courses, such as medicine and dentistry, maths, economics or languages.
The report stresses that young people need "early engagement" in careers information and advice, with one in three students not knowing that university was an option for them at primary school.
Ucas also notes that those from advantaged homes were 1.4 times more likely to think about going to university during their primary school days than their more disadvantaged peers.
Just over a quarter (27%) of disadvantaged students said they started thinking about higher education at primary, compared with nearly two in five (39%) of their more advantaged peers.