The University of New Hampshire will offer a few hundred in-state students a tuition-free education starting next fall.
The program – called the Granite Guarantee – will help about 285 incoming freshman attend college by bridging the gap between UNH’s in-state tuition and a student’s Pell grants, according to a UNH press release. The commitment remains in place for four years, provided the student is enrolled full time, remains Pell eligible and makes satisfactory progress toward a degree.
The campaign will help about 2 percent of the student body, and the students most in need of financial assistance. UNH spokeswoman Erika Mantz said the university will spend about $4.8 million on fulfilling the guarantee in the first year. Estimates are based upon partial information available for Fall 2017 first-year students. That estimate might change, she said, after the March 1 admissions deadline.
But tuition-free is not necessarily a “free” education.
Tuition for in-state students is currently valued at $14,410, while the cost of housing, books, meals and other fees adds up to nearly $18,000, bringing the total cost to attend the university closer to $32,000 a year.
“We are trying to address the needs of New Hampshire’s neediest first,” UNH President Mark Huddleston said. “There’s an old saying, ‘The perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good,’ and the fact that we don’t have the financial resources to provide free education to everyone is unfortunate. … But we shouldn’t wait until we have all the resources to solve all the problems.”
UNH has not set tuition for next year, and the maximum amount of Pell aid changes yearly. But had this program been in effect this year, when the maximum Pell grant was $5,815, awards through this program would have been $8,500 per student or more.
Huddleston said the program is meant to continue indefinitely and is an important first step in ensuring affordable education for the state’s residents most in need. But he also acknowledged the school has a long way to go to provide an affordable education for everyone. The estimated 285 Pell-eligible students make up about 10 percent of the incoming freshman class, he said.
His comments were echoed by Gov. Chris Sununu.
“UNH’s Granite Guarantee lends opportunities for low-income New Hampshire students to seek higher education and explore workforce pathways that may not have otherwise seemed possible,” Sununu said in a statement. “I applaud the University of New Hampshire for this game-changing opportunity for some of New Hampshire’s most high-need students.”
While the program was the result of private fundraising, Huddleston said UNH will need more help from the state to address the issue of affordable education.
The University System of New Hampshire asked for a 12 percent funding increase from the state over the next two fiscal years, about $20 million over the current budget. The plan promised scholarships for high school valedictorians and salutatorians and a tuition freeze in exchange for the funding, but was not included in Sununu’s proposed budget, which kept state funding flat at $81 million. However, Sununu’s budget adds $5 million for a scholarship fund that will go directly to 1,000 in-state students, rather than the university system itself.
The state has some of the highest in-state tuition rates for public universities in the country, according to The College Board. Graduates of New Hampshire institutions also had the highest debt load nationwide in two of the last three years, according to the Project on Student Debt. Likewise, the state has the lowest per capita public support for higher education in the nation.
The program comes when the number of Pell grants awarded is dropping. About 7.3 million students received grant money in the 2015-16 school year, 18 percent lower than five years ago, according to The College Board website. Total grant expenditures declined by 28 percent in that period; however, the $28.2 million distributed under the program in 2015-16 was 82 percent higher than the amount awarded a decade earlier.
The trend can be seen at UNH, too: Mantz said 2,151 New Hampshire students received Pell aid during the 2012-13 school year, compared to the 1,926 students receiving grants during 2016-17 to date.
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)