Rising Cost of Gasoline Pinches Students at Rural Community Colleges - LIBBY SANDER, Chronicle of Higher Education

The 230 miles of Texas highway linking the plains of Lamesa to the hill country of Junction is familiar terrain to local college students accustomed to traveling long distances to class. But with gasoline prices averaging $4 per gallon, students in the community-college district that stretches between those two west Texas towns, like their peers in other rural communities, are feeling the sting. Aware of the increasing burden of fuel costs on their students, the administrators of rural community colleges are looking for ways to help students stay on track with their studies even as their monthly transportation bills rise, in some cases approaching the several-hundred-dollar range.