Nightly sleep is key to student success
COLLEGE is a time of transition for young adults. It may be the first time students have the freedom to determine how to spend their time, but this freedom comes with competing interests from academics, social events and even sleep.
A multi-institutional team of researchers conducted the first study to evaluate how the duration of nightly sleep early in the semester affects first year college students end-of-semester grade point average (GPA). Using Fitbit sleep trackers, they found that students on average sleep 6.5 hours a night, but negative outcomes accumulate when students receive less than six hours of sleep a night.
Previous studies have shown that total sleep is an important predictor for a broad range of health and performance outcomes. Sleep guidelines recommend teenagers get 8 to 10 hours of sleep every night. Many college students experience irregular and insufficient sleep.
The study evaluated more than 600 first-year students across five studies at three universities. The students wore wrist Fitbit devices to monitor and record their sleep patterns. The researchers found that students in the study sleep on average 6.5 hours a night.
More surprising, the researchers found that students who receive less than six hours of sleep experienced a pronounced decline in academic performance. In addition, each hour of sleep lost corresponded to a 0.07 decrease in end-of-term GPA.
The research noted that once sleeping dips below six hours, a student starts to accumulate massive sleep debt that can impair a student’s health and study habits, compromising the whole system.
The study controlled for past academic performance, daytime napping, race, gender and first-generation status. Several of the studies also controlled for total academic course load. None of these factors affected the overall impact of nightly sleep on GPA.
A popular belief among college students is to value studying more or partying more over nightly sleep. The study suggested that there are potentially real costs to reducing nightly sleep on students’ ability to learn and achieve in college. There’s real value in budgeting for the importance of nightly sleep.
The study suggested the importance of building structured programs and interventions at institutions of learning that encourage undergraduate students to focus on their sleep. (Carnegie Mellon University)
