Does Joining a Fraternity or Sorority Actually Improve Grades and Earnings After Graduation? No, a Study Finds

It’s a talking point at many fraternity and sorority recruitment tables, rush events, and chapter house tours: Recruiters for Greek student organizations say their members have higher GPAs compared with their non-Greek-life counterparts.

Promises of finding career success through connections is another talking point.

But the results of a study released this month are challenging such assurances. Written by two researchers from Miami University, the paper, “Greek Life, Academics, and Earnings,” found that Greek affiliation is correlated with lower grade-point averages .

The researchers also studied the starting salary of recent graduates through a postgraduation survey. They found that students who joined the Greek system in their second semester had 15-percent higher salaries than those who didn’t. But there was no evidence to support the contention that Greek affiliation was the cause of higher earnings, according to the report.

The study cited data from a survey distributed at an unnamed “large public university located in the midwestern United States.”

William E. Even, an economics professor at Miami University, spoke with The Chronicle on Tuesday about his findings, and whether they might disprove the theory that Greek-life organizations develop high-achieving leaders.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Can you describe your findings in layman’s terms?

A. When students join a fraternity or sorority it tends to have a negative effect on their grades. These effects tend to be larger in the spring semester, which is, at this particular institution, when the students pledge. This is true for both students who are going through the pledge process, as well as more senior members who are involved.

We found that people who join fraternities and sororities do not have earnings that are higher than those that don’t. If anything, there is a slight negative effect on the earnings. We can’t rule out a zero effect.

Q. Do your findings cut against the conventional wisdom?

A. Conventional wisdom varies. For example, a lot of fraternities and sororities advertise that their GPAs are above their institution’s averages, and that’s correct. Using that simple statistic they might want you to believe that joining will drive up your grades. That statistic does not support that conclusion.

The conventional wisdom might be, to a group of naive observers, that joining a fraternity or sorority drives grades up. But you require that everybody joining that fraternity or sorority has a 2.5 GPA or above in their first semester; we’ve thus eliminated a good chunk of the lower-ability students. We would therefore expect that they would have GPAs above the institution average.

Q. Yet fraternity and sorority chapters often say that their members have GPAs above their institutional averages.

A. If you go to websites where individual fraternities and sororities advertise themselves you’ll see reports of that. You will see it from the national chapters. A fair number of fraternities and sororities require it. If members drop below the institution average, fraternities and sororities may have to terminate them. This isn’t true across all fraternities and sororities, but there are a fair number.

Q. What lessons should universities with large Greek presences take from your research?

A. When we look at negative grade effects by semester, they’re always greatest in the spring –– when pledging takes place. The pledging process is the bigger problem, or amplifies the problem. Some national fraternities and sororities have changed the way pledging works to reduce the power active members have over their pledges, and perhaps reduce the chance that pledges would subject themselves to hazing.

Some of the things that Greek organizations present about “we will help your grades” should maybe be recast. Parents and students might be led to believe that Greek organizations will help improve grades and might cause some students to join. Had they known otherwise, they might not have joined or they might be more careful in thinking about how Greek organizations might impact their grades.

Q. What inspired this research topic?

A. So many of my own students are in fraternities and sororities. I sometimes wonder how much membership affects their grades. I hear students say, “Oh it’s been a bad semester. I’ve spent so much time in the pledge process, and I just haven’t devoted as much time as I should to my studies.”

Q. Is there much existing research on the link between Greek involvement and academic and employment outcomes?

A. There are fewer than a half dozen studies on this. Those studies generally had data that wasn’t as good as ours. I am not saying those studies were flawed. We are able to do a better job of identifying the effect because of the kind of data that we have. It’s from the institution, not self-reported.

Follow Andy Tsubasa Field on Twitter at @AndyTsubasaF, or email him at andy.field@chronicle.com.