To Greek or Not to Greek? Impacts of Fraternity and Sorority Involvement on Academic Outcomes (2014)

Undergraduate: Andrew Darvin

Faculty Advisor: Stephen Lich-Tyler
Department: Economics

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The academic and social impacts of fraternal organizations on college campuses have become a topic of more fervent debate in recent years. Recruitment websites for Greek life often claim that fraternity and sorority members achieve greater levels of campus involvement and academic success. Contrastingly, critics of the Greek system point to reputed negative social impacts, including contributions to rape culture, dangerous hazing of new initiates, and incidences of alcohol poisoning, and common media stereotypes to refute these claims. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (NLSF), this paper investigates the effect of participating in a Greek organization on academic outcomes for students at fairly selective postsecondary institutions, namely grade point average (GPA) and graduation rates. Employing propensity score matching (PSM) with a nearest neighbor caliper method allowed for the resampling of survey data to account for self-selection bias into fraternities and sororities. Following PSM, ordinary least squares and probit regressions were used to determine the effect of participation in Greek organization on GPA and graduation rates. A negative relationship was found between Greek membership and cumulative GPA of roughly half of one letter mark (0.15 GPA points on a 4.0 scale), though participation in the Greek system is correlated to an increased chance of graduating within four years and within six years.