Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Kalamazoo College students' support for a shuttle service

A research team from the Business Statistic Class (spring 2011) conducted a study called “K Transportation Survey”. This study was focus on the transportation preferences of Kalamazoo College students and if they would be willing to support a bus shuttle service to and from common places off-campus, the airport, and the train station. The results demonstrated that there is not strong support for the airport (32%) and the train station (55%) shuttle. However, 77% of students at K showed interest on having a transportation service to and from the common places off-campus paying in average 1.58 dollars per trip.

It also calls our attention that as class standing (year) increases the support for the shuttle service decreases. The research team found that 100% of all the freshman students, 83.33% of all the sophomores, 71.42% of all the juniors and 50% of the seniors who answered the survey support the shuttle service to common places off-campus such as Meijer. The strong support of the freshman population could be due to factors such as the necessity of having a convenient mean of transportation to go shopping as first years are not allow to have cars on campus, or that as the majority of them are new in the area they would like to explore deeply the city of Kalamazoo. The low support from the other groups could be due to the increase of more responsibilities, the study abroad programs, off-campus living and a greater knowledge of the city.

This information is significant and definitely could be used by the Student Development Office at K College. It could help to determinate whether giving the students another transportation option would be beneficial and worth the effort of its implementation.

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