Michigan State University writes a story with the self-explanatory headline, “Want a higher GPA in college? Join a gym.”
We’re running this press release because we support the idea of students connecting to their schools, especially when those connections involve healthy activities. We don’t believe, however, as MSU’s headline implies, that joining a gym will cause a higher GPA. What is more likely, as the study itself suggests, is that students who join gyms have a greater disposition to achieve higher GPAs anyway, because of their implicit understanding that hard work pays off, and they would probably achieve those GPAs even without gym memberships.
The other conclusions drawn here—that students who establish connections to their university communities have a higher probability of finishing college or of staying longer—are consistent with our experience. “The more students are academically and socially involved, the more likely are they to persist and graduate,” writes Vincent Tinto of Syracuse University in the 1999 article “Taking retention seriously: Rethinking the first year of college,” cited by no fewer than 700 other journal articles and published in the NACADA Journal.
For those students looking to bump up their grade point averages during college, the answer may not be spending more time in a library or study hall, but in a gym. New MSU research shows that students who were members of the recreational sports and fitness centers on MSU’s campus during their freshman and sophomore years had higher GPAs than those who weren’t.
The research also indicated that students with memberships stayed in school longer. An increase of 3.5 percent in two-year retention rates was seen among this group.
“That could equate to about 1,575 people within a student population of 49,000 deciding to move on to a third year of school,” said James Pivarnik, a professor of kinesiology and epidemiology at MSU and one of the study’s authors. “These results provide a compelling argument to universities that a higher student retention rate could be enhanced just by having adequate recreational and fitness facilities for students.”
The research is published in the most recent issue of the Recreational Sports Journal. Other authors include Samantha J Danbert, Richard N McNeil, and Ira J Washington, all of whom work at MSU.
The research supports previous theories suggesting that by creating an environment that connects students to an institution, in this case a university recreational facility, an increase in academic success and retention can occur.
During the project, researchers analyzed data from a sample of freshmen and sophomores, totaling 4,843 students, and compared the GPAs of those who purchased a fitness facility membership and those who did not. Results showed that after four consecutive semesters, the students with memberships obtained higher cumulative GPAs. They also had more credits completed by the end of their first year in college.
“We found that these students’ cumulative GPAs were 0.13 points higher,” Pivarnik said. “Although this number may not appear to be significant, in the end, that amount could mean the difference to those students on the cusp of getting into graduate school or even advancing to the next academic year.”