Just a little more sleep can make a big difference in college students’ grades

A large field experiment paid university students small cash rewards for hitting a seven-hour sleep goal. By the end of the semester, those students weren’t just sleeping better.
They were earning meaningfully higher grades too, a result that runs against the usual assumption that academic performance is mostly a matter of studying harder or getting more support in the classroom.

The study, led by Osea Giuntella at the University of Pittsburgh, provides the first causal evidence that improving sleep can directly boost academic performance.