With the number of applications down and a demographic cliff looming over higher education, administrators at the University of New Hampshire projected earlier this year that they would enroll about 100 fewer students this coming fall than last year.
Instead, they got a pleasant surprise: First-year deposits are up 4% from this time last year. If all those students enroll, the state’s largest public university will exceed its internal projections for the incoming class by roughly 275 students.
New England College in Henniker and Colby-Sawyer College in New London have had similarly good springs. The two schools’ deposits are up 26% and 17%, respectively, compared to the same time last year, administrators at the two institutions said.
The three schools are bucking national projections for 2026.
Driven by declining birth rates that started during the Great Recession, the total number of students who graduate high school in the U.S. is expected to decrease 12% over the next 15 years, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
“We have known for a long time that this year is the first year of the demographic cliff that everybody’s been talking about in higher ed,” Kimberly DeRego, UNH’s vice provost for enrollment management, said in an interview.
The good news on enrollment for these schools is particularly notable because both UNH and New England College had seen declining class sizes over the past decade.
First-year enrollment at UNH decreased 12% last year, according to the university, while total undergraduate enrollment at New England College dropped nearly in half from 2019 to 2023, before beginning to rebound in recent years, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Even with strong years in 2026, neither school will return to its previous enrollment highs.
The other public universities in New Hampshire didn’t fare as well as UNH, according to data provided to the Monitor. At Plymouth State and Keene State, first-year deposits were down 10% and 6%, respectively, though both institutions’ numbers were roughly on par with 2024 deposits at this point in the admissions cycle. Administrators and spokespeople at both schools said they were continuing to review applications and noted that students were taking longer to make decisions than they used to.
At Saint Anselm College in Manchester, deposits were also down, though spokesperson Paul Pronovost said that was intentional because the college enrolled the largest class in its history last year, straining the institution’s resources.
Factors driving enrollment growth
Leaders at the institutions experiencing growth attributed it to different factors.
In Durham, the focus was on pushing the message of the “good value” that a UNH degree provides.
“The throughline of value and tying that into all of our communications — I would say that was a new strategy,” DeRego said.
Touting its U.S. News & World Report ranking as the best value public university in New England, UNH hung banners around its campus and emphasized the message in communications to applicants. (U.S. News & World Report relies on universities’ academic quality rankings and a variety of financial data to determine an institution’s value.)
The effort has seemed to resonate. Forty-seven percent of depositing students who responded to a university survey said UNH was a “much better” value than other institutions, according to a university press release.
At New England College, the growth has largely come from the expansion and creation of new programs, said Brad Poznanski, the vice president of enrollment management.
In 2024, the college started a football team. New cheerleading and track and field teams have since followed.
This coming year, 45 incoming students — about one in every seven new students — will join the football team, Poznanski said.
The establishment of the new teams was motivated in part by a desire to increase enrollment, but it also comes with other benefits, he said.
“We know that athletes have done well academically, they retain at high rates, they’re engaged, strong contributors to the campus community, so it’s all positive,” Poznanski said.
He said two-thirds of growth was driven by recruited athletes and one-third by all other students. He also attributed enrollment growth to the school’s nursing program.
Administrators and spokespeople at Colby-Sawyer, Keene State and Plymouth State all wrote in statements that they were also experiencing particularly high interest in their nursing programs this year.
More UNH enrollment details
Though UNH is projecting a larger first-year class this year than last year, total undergraduate enrollment is still expected to drop due to the number of students set to graduate.
Increased enrollment is also not expected to lead to a major boost in tuition revenue, according to DeRego.
“Some of the characteristics of this class make it so that more financial aid and scholarships were given,” she said.
The number of students who are eligible for Pell Grants increased by three percentage points, from 17% to 20%. In addition, the percentage of students eligible to receive the highest merit scholarship, given to students who achieve a weighted GPA of over 4.0, increased by 20%.
DeRego noted that the improved academic performance of enrolled students was not simply a product of grade inflation. After a COVID-era jump in the average grades of applicants, she said GPAs have leveled off in recent years.
The increase in deposits this year was primarily driven by out-of-state students. 1,428 out-of-state students submitted deposits this year compared to 1,340 last year. In-state deposits remained steady at 1,039 each year.
DeRego said she was happy New Hampshire deposits stayed flat because the state is experiencing greater demographic decline than neighboring states. The number of 12th graders in public schools in the state dropped almost 1% this year compared to last year, according to data from the Department of Education.
