Does early bird catch the worm or a lower GPA? Evidence from a liberal arts college

ABSTRACT

Research in psychology has shown that early morning classes are not conducive to learning because of the peculiar sleep cycles of adolescents and young adults that cause them to be especially groggy in the morning. Our study examines the relationship between the times that classes are offered and the grades that students in these classes earn at a highly selective liberal arts college. Our main findings are that morning classes are harmful for student achievement. Grades are especially lower for classes that were scheduled at 8 am and 9 am. Moreover, while students of both genders are adversely affected by early morning courses, the effects are particularly pronounced for male students. This institution assigns students randomly to different sections of the same course, thus creating a quasi-natural experiment and enabling us to control for unobserved characteristics of students. In addition, we include student and faculty fixed effects.

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I20
• I21
• I23
• A22
• Z18

KEYWORDS:

• Class time
• grades
• GPA
• student learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ This is because they have access to a limited amount of financial resources. These financial resources may include possibilities of parental transfers or borrowing from various sources. Students want to consume other goods and services that also provide them with utility, but these other goods are not explicitly included in this model for simplicity. Therefore, higher level of tuition reduces their utility as students have fewer resources to buy other goods. Students will have neither the ability nor the willingness to pay increases in tuition beyond a point. Therefore, the amount that a university can raise from tuition is not unlimited for these reasons as well as needing to compete with similar institutions for students.

² The data were obtained under an agreement to not disclose the name of the institution.