Carolina Sanchez Garcia used to wake at 3 a.m. to reach the elementary school where she teaches in San Diego. Housing was so expensive that she lived in Tijuana and spent up to four hours commuting, her children asleep in the back seat. She now gets to work in 15 minutes and pays $1,500 for a three-bedroom apartment that would ordinarily rent for $4,500. She called it a miracle.

Districts in California, Texas and Florida are building housing because teachers can't afford to live where they work. That's one version of what runs through today's edition: Education's real competition is departure.

Kaua'i has roughly 30 infant-and-toddler childcare spots for the 700 babies born there each year, pushing mothers out of jobs and some families off the island. Southern Oregon University's latest round of cuts will bring its four-year losses to nine majors and 212 positions. The university may still close, taking with it the closest and most affordable public four-year option for students across the region.

Sometimes schools are fighting the exit. Sometimes they are creating it.

Howard unenrolled 502 incoming first-year students who missed a July 10 payment deadline and has since reinstated dozens. At Compton College, where more than half of surveyed students reported experiencing food insecurity in the previous month, second-year students will soon have to meet new requirements, including filing an education plan and joining Handshake, to continue receiving free meals and farmers market vouchers.

President Keith Curry says the current level of service is not sustainable when students remain enrolled for six or seven years. Nicholas Freudenberg, who led CUNY's work on food insecurity, warns that the more requirements institutions add, the more people they lose, and those lost are usually the neediest.

The question is what makes staying possible, and who decides when the help costs too much to keep offering.

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