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Students whose parents don't have degrees are more focused on their own job prospects, new research suggests.

As reported by the Guardian, the Futuretrack study, commissioned by the Higher Education Careers Service Unit (HECSU) will follow 130,000 university applicants for six years through their early careers.

Initial research has show that the educational background of students' parents has a big influence on the students' approach to university and career aspirations.

First-generation applicants - those applicants whose parents did not go to university - were found to place more importance on career and employment prospects when deciding to go to university than those applicants whose parents also had degrees.

Applicants in the first group were more likely to give their main reason for choosing university as being "to enable me to get a good job" and over a third said that a degree was "part of my longer-term career plan".

Students who parents had degrees were less likely to describe either of these motivations.

It is thought that students coming from non-professional family backgrounds, which are often not particularly affluent, may feel a greater financail pressure to focus on their long-term career goals rather than just engaging in learning for its own sake.