At the End of the Day,I Want to Be Close to Home: Adult Students' Preferences for College Proximity to Work and Home

ABSTRACT

Using 10 distinct samples, analyses were conducted to determine whether empirical support could be garnered for the proposition that working adults selecting a college for part-time studies tend to consider the proximity of the school to their home to be more important than the school's proximity to where they work. On a hypothetical task (first 5 samples), a clear preference for home proximity was evident. However, when real-life choices were studied (last 5 samples), the evidence for a preference for proximity to home was much weaker, perhaps because the research was conducted in a metropolitan region with numerous college choices, so that the perceived proximity to home and work were identical in most instances.