The Price of Gas Shouldn’t Decide Who Gets to Graduate
Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile Founder & CEO
Gas prices are back in the headlines—rising again as global oil markets react to the war in Iran. For many, this is an inconvenience: a little extra at the pump, maybe a tighter grocery budget.
But for the students I work with, it’s something else entirely.
It’s a breaking point.
Picture a student—let’s call her Maya.
She’s in her final year of an engineering degree. First in her family to go to college. Working two jobs. Carrying a full course load. She’s not struggling academically—she’s doing everything right.
But Maya commutes 40 minutes each way to campus because that’s where the lab is. That’s where the equipment is. That’s where the future she’s been working toward actually lives. Last month, filling her tank cost $55. This month, it’s $70.
That $15 difference doesn’t sound like much—until you realize it’s the margin she was using for groceries, or her phone bill, or medication she’s already stretching longer than she should.
So she starts making tradeoffs. She skips a day of class to save gas. Then another. Then she picks up an extra shift to cover the difference—which means missing a lab she can’t make up.
And just like that, the system starts to push her out—not because she lacks talent, but because the margin for error is always zero.
At Last Mile, we track basic needs insecurity across multiple dimensions—housing, food, childcare, technology, and transportation—because success isn’t just about academics. It’s about stability.
And one of the most striking things we see is this:
Transportation and mobility is a challenge for 35% of our applicants. Not passing the class. Not understanding the material.
Getting to school. Literally getting there.
These are students within months of graduating in engineering, computing, and cybersecurity. They’ve already cleared the hardest intellectual hurdles. They are not failing out. They are being edged out by logistics: gas, a car repair, insurance, a bus route that doesn’t run early enough or late enough.
It’s an invisible barrier—one that doesn’t show up on a transcript—but it is powerful enough to derail a future.
Each year, an estimated 13,800 Juniors and Seniors in these fields leave college just short of a degree because of small financial gaps like this. We call it a “talent shortage.” But this isn’t a shortage. It’s a system failure.
Because macro forces—wars, oil markets, global supply chains—don’t land equally.
They land hardest on people already walking a financial tightrope.
A $15 increase at the pump is background noise for some. For others, it’s the difference between showing up and falling behind—between staying enrolled and stopping out, between becoming an engineer and never finishing.
If you want to understand the real impact of rising gas prices, don’t look at the charts. Look at Maya. Look at the moment she decides whether to fill her tank or buy groceries. Look at how quickly a global conflict becomes a personal crisis.
And then ask the harder question:
In an economy that depends on talent, why are we still allowing something this basic to determine who gets to finish?
Because it doesn’t take much to change the outcome. A few hundred dollars for gas. A one-time car repair. A transit pass at the right moment.
“The speed of getting the funds made such a big impact … I was driving my little baby, who had just turned one at the time, in a car seat on tires that were balding: I was driving an unsafe car.
My insurance had lapsed. Everything had lapsed…I was just at my breaking point. So just at the very last minute before everything fell apart and fell to the ground my Last Mile award came through and I was able to get caught up on everything, get ahead on things, and it made all the difference.”
These aren’t handouts. They are high-return investments in human potential—ones that determine whether a student crosses the finish line or disappears from the pipeline.
The war in Iran didn’t create this problem. It exposed it. It revealed how fragile the system is for students already doing everything we ask of them—and how quickly forces outside their control can knock them off course.
We can build systems that absorb shocks instead of amplifying them. We can design for completion, not just access. Because the difference between a graduate and a dropout is not talent.
It’s whether they can afford to get there.
