As Private Colleges Give Deep Discounts, NH Offers Alternatives

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-part series about student aid and college affordability.  

New Hampshire is home to nearly two dozen colleges, the most elite of which, Dartmouth College in Hanover, has a tuition rate of about $48,000. But if your family income is less than $100,000, it could be free for an eligible student. And Dartmouth is not alone. Other elite schools, such as MIT, also offer free tuition for students from families with less than $75,000 in income.

Granted, not everyone can get into an Ivy League school, but NH students do have affordable options, including online degrees and the competency-based College for America program where 70 percent of students will graduate debt free.

All these options leave NH’s public university system and the state at a disadvantage. New Hampshire is the only state that offers no state-funded scholarships. That contributes to the nearly 60 percent of Granite State high school graduates pursuing a four-year college who leave NH. That’s the largest student exodus nationwide, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. And students who attend school in other states often don’t return.

The Discount Battleground
Discounts for tuition at private colleges hit an all-time high in 2015, with, on average, 42 cents of every dollar of tuition and fee revenue going to scholarships and grants, according to The National Association of College and University Business Officers’ report released in May.

About 88 percent of first-time freshmen and nearly 78 percent of all undergraduates were awarded aid in 2015, according to the study. And schools are increasingly dipping into their endowments to support those deep discounts. The report shows schools with endowments of more than $1 billion funded one-third of scholarships with endowment dollars, versus 7 percent of scholarships at schools with endowments of less than $25 million.

With lower endowment investment returns, net revenue at colleges grew just 1.8 percent between 2014 and 2015 and 37.5 percent of institutions report declining enrollments, according to the report, such discounting to attract top talent isn’t sustainable.  

But for now it exists in force, even from public schools. UMass Lowell in Massachusetts offers a Proximity Regional Rates Program, which cuts tuition for undergraduate NH students who live closer to UMass Lowell than their home state institution offering the same academic program. The University of Maine in Orono recently began offering in-state tuition rates to students from other New England states.

Programs like that challenge NH’s efforts to keep more students in-state and to get more of NH’s workforce credentialed. University System of NH Chancellor Todd Leach notes that one of NH’s largest exports is high school graduates. New Hampshire consistently ranks among the worst states for state support of higher education. And while the University System of NH’s institutions rank below the median net price among all NH colleges and universities, nationally, NH college graduates carry the second highest average student debt in the country ($33,410) and have the highest proportion of students with debt (76 percent), according to 2014 statistics from The Institute for College Access and Success. However, Leach points out that USNH schools annually rank among institutions with the lowest average loan default rate.

Ed MacKay, director of the NH Division of Higher Education and former USNH chancellor, says neighboring states have been increasing their financial commitment to higher education.

“Other states are recognizing the advantage of recruiting college-age students to come to schools and retain them in-state after graduation,” he says. “It’s a sustaining economic vitality strategy.”

Despite that, the NH Legislature made deep cuts to the University System of NH in 2011,  and restoration of those funds has been slow. Even the $81 million approved in the current budget is well below USNH’s peak funding of $153.8 million in 2008, and $9 million short of the $90 million the system requested for the current biennium budget.

Steps taken in the previous biennium allowed USNH to freeze tuition, but with the shortfall in this budget, USNH announced it would make cuts to keep any increase to 2.75 percent.

Alternate Paths
With young people leaving NH for more affordable degrees elsewhere, the University System has stepped up to the plate. New Hampshire’s Community College System froze its tuition for the past several years, says Tom Horgan, president and CEO of the NH College and University Council.

And to cut costs without affecting students, the USNH shifted to a self-insured health plan, which means it assumes the risk of covering health insurance for its employees. Combined with other administrative changes, this has led to savings of $10 million annually, says Leach. USNH is also looking at other ways to cut costs including using more online text books and open source materials in courses, Leach says.

The Community College System of NH has been at the forefront of creating affordable pathways for students. New programs allow community college graduates to transfer credits to public and private four-year colleges in NH and New England. That allows students to pay community college rates for the first two years of their degree and then pay only two-years worth of higher tuition to earn a bachelor’s degree.  

In spring 2016, 71 of the 324 graduates from Great Bay Community College (GBCC) in Portsmouth applied for fall admission to the University of NH, the highest number in GBCC history.

This past year, the state launched Dual NH, which allows students to pay one application fee and enroll at a NH Community College and be admitted into the University System of NH at the same time. More than 1,000 students have expressed an interest on their application form to participate in the program, Leach says.

Not to be left out of the feeder system, New England College in Henniker launched the CC2NEC program in 2015—Community College to New England College—that automatically accepts community college students from anywhere in the United States to New England College. It also began offering four full-tuition scholarships to community college students (at least one of which will be awarded to a student from a community college in NH.)

“There’s a path for everyone to college. You just have to understand your path may not be the same as everybody else’s, and that’s okay,” says Tori Berube, vice president of college planning and community engagement at the NHHEAF Network Organizations in Concord.

Outreach Efforts
The state also has programs to encourage students to apply for college, including Running Start, says Horgan. Running Start allows high school students to receive dual high school and college credit at a cost of $150 per course while still in high school. It gives them a head start and cuts their future college costs.

Running Start credits are accepted at more than 200 colleges, including many in NH. The program has 100 NH high schools participating, and student registrations have increased 25 percent during the last five years.

While college costs are a big hurdle for some families, filling out the financial aid forms can be equally daunting, especially for first-generation students.

“We encourage families we work with to build lists of schools that are not just good academic fits but good financial fits as well. We’re seeing more families coming in concerned with cost,” says Berube of NHHEAF, which helps NH students and their families to navigate the application and
financing process.

The Manchester School District, in a joint effort with the University of NH, is also working to make it easier for kids to get to college. The district received a $48,590 grant from the National College Access Network in June, to increase FAFSA completion rates in 2017 by at least 5 percent over the class of 2015. Federal statistics show 90 percent of high school seniors who complete the FAFSA attend college directly from high school, compared to just 55 percent of those who don’t.

“Fifty-five percent of our children are on free or reduced lunch, which means we have a great deal of our kids who are vulnerable and live at the poverty level and may wish to go to college but think they do not have the resources to do so,” says Debra Livingston, the outgoing Manchester school district superintendent. “Some may be the first generation to go and don’t have anyone to rely on to know this student aid is available. [This grant] will heighten our ability to get information out to every high school student in the district.”

The grant will fund UNH student access team at all four district high schools for FAFSA and college application support, guidance counselor training and transportation for students to attend college access activities at UNH’s Manchester campus.

Though Livingston is leaving her position, she plans to volunteer for this effort. “I was a first generation college [student], and I remember how daunting it was for my parents to fill out the paperwork,” she says.