The Academic Ethic and College Grades: Does Hard Work Help Students to "Make the Grade"?

Abstract

Most scholars and teachers accept, as part of the natural order of the universe, a strong relationship between study efforts and students' academic performance. Yet, the only systematic investigation of this relationship, a 12-year project at the University of Michigan, repeatedly found little to no correlation between hours studied and grades. The study presented here replicated parts of this project but did so with a different conceptualization of effort. This new perspective views effort as the outcome of an academic ethic, a student worldview that emphasizes diligent, daily, and sober study. This article shows how this concept can be operationalized and measured and provides evidence for its existence among some students at Illinois State University. It then shows a significant and meaningful relationship between methodical, disciplined study and academic performance. It closes by considering how the selectivity of colleges and universities would affect the findings and suggests some new directions for research

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