The depth of involvement of the consumer when hiring or purchasing a service is directly connected to the size of the risk he can perceive throughout the process of evaluation and acquisition of the product. That's why, when there are risks while choosing the higher education course, the cognitive dissonance comes as an important component to be analyzed in the process. Because of that, the objective of this article is to identify the main reasons for the graduate student's preferences for choosing Distance Education (DE) in lieu to presencial classes. In Brazil, this issue is particularly relevant due to the exponential growth of distance education, as a result of Information and Communication Technologies' (ICT) expansion and the promulgation of 1996's "Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional" (Law of Education Guidelines and Bases). As a methodological approach, exploratory research was conducted using the semi-structured interviews technique with a sample of ten people who had or still have gone through a DE graduation, regardless of the course. For the data analysis it was used the Content Analysis. During the final results it was shown that the flexible hours made possible by distance education through ICT was the main reason for choosing the DE over a classroom course.