Across American university campuses, a quiet crisis of exhaustion shapes the academic lives of millions of students who have inherited a culture that mistakes sleeplessness for ambition. A large collaborative study involving more than 1,100 undergraduates has now demonstrated, with careful precision, that modest financial nudges—small nightly payments tied to meeting basic sleep targets—can meaningfully lift grades, particularly among freshmen and those navigating the demands of STEM coursework. The finding invites a deeper question about institutional responsibility: if universities already i