Merrimack Valley High School senior Keighen Duppong knows attending the University of New Hampshire would likely cost thousands of dollars less per year than most of the schools on his college list.

Duppong, who plans to study applied physics, has sent in his application to UNH but doesn’t expect to enroll there. His top choices are public universities hundreds of miles away.

“I would love to stay local if we had a tech school that was comparable to something like Georgia Tech and their program or the University of Michigan, which is currently number one in the country for nuclear fission,” Duppong said. “These colleges have the resources, while UNH is lacking in that regard.”

Duppong’s good friend, Gage Caswell, is also a high-achieving student who plans to pursue a college degree in a STEM field. He too anticipates he’ll be in another state next year.

“I want to say that I’m considering UNH pretty heavily because it is a really good school,” said Caswell, who hopes to major in applied mathematics. “But honestly I think I would go somewhere like Clarkson University because New Hampshire really isn’t a state designed for young people. It’s just not that appealing.”

For Caswell, the choice is also financial: Many of the elite private schools he is applying to, including several in the Ivy League, guarantee full financial aid to those in his family’s income bracket. His mother is also an employee at Southern New Hampshire University, which gives Caswell the opportunity for free tuition through an exchange program at several schools on his list, including Boston University and Tulane University.

Duppong and Caswell, who met as second graders at Penacook Elementary School, share the views of many New Hampshire high school students contemplating where they will go to college.

The state trails only Vermont in the percentage of students who leave their home state for higher education. In 2020, 57% of college freshmen from New Hampshire left the state to enroll elsewhere. That’s more than double the national average of 26% of students who leave their home state to attend college, according to the National Center for Education Statistics data from 2020, the most recent year for which the numbers were available.

The reasons are multi-faceted, but primarily economic. In a survey of 1,000 recent college enrollees conducted by BestColleges in 2023, affordability was considered the most important factor in making a college decision. Professional outcomes, which is a prime factor in Duppong’s decision, came in second. The student life factors that Caswell mentioned were further down the list.

New Hampshire ranks last in the country in the amount of per-pupil funding for higher education, according to a study conducted by the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute last year that relied on data from 2021-22. That year, New Hampshire’s in-state tuition was the second highest, trailing only Vermont’s, according to Forbes.

Geography also plays a role: New Hampshire is a relatively small state in close proximity to a number of universities across state lines.

‘Educational opportunities’

The state’s public university system – comprised of UNH, Plymouth State, and Keene State – has in recent years attempted to make inroads. The Granite Guarantee program, which began in 2018, covers the full cost of tuition at state universities for students who are Pell Grant-eligible, a threshold that varies by family and is calculated via a complex formula.

Kim DeRego, UNH’s vice president of enrollment management, said in an interview that the state’s flagship is considering transitioning to a set income threshold instead of employing Pell Granite eligibility to offer families more clarity earlier in the financial aid process.

UNH also touts its Hamel Scholars program, which provides merit-based scholarships and special access to faculty to New Hampshire students. In addition, UNH and Plymouth State are also piloting a direct admission program this year, which allows students who meet certain qualifications to be automatically accepted without having to submit a formal application.

DeRego said that prospective students sometimes underestimate what UNH has to offer.

“Unfortunately, I think people don’t realize what an excellent school UNH is,” DeRego said, citing UNH’s status as the “top value” public university in New England, according to U.S. News & World Report, among other accolades.

Though applications to New Hampshire’s flagship university have increased in recent years, undergraduate enrollment has dropped about 8%, from 12,313 in 2019 to 11,365 this year – a trend reflected in declining college enrollment nationally.

At an event last month hosted at Merrimack Valley High School’s library by the non-profit higher education and career support organization Granite Edvance, only one student out of six who spoke with the Monitor said she was planning to attend a university in-state.

The student, Hannah Walden of Loudon, grew up attending hockey games at UNH in part because her father is an alumnus.

“It just feels like home to me,” said Walden, who hopes to head to Durham next fall to study nursing.

The event that Walden was at, called ApplyNH, gives students the opportunity to apply to any school in New Hampshire without having to pay the application fee.

About 80 high schools across the state held similar days this fall, according to Christiana Thornton, the president and CEO of Granite Edvance.

Thornton said the program, which has been ongoing since at least 2014, is not specifically designed to encourage students to stay in New Hampshire.

“Our goal really is to provide support to students to pursue either college or career pathways – really just ensuring that they have educational opportunities,” Thornton said. “And whether that’s in-state or out-of-state, you know, we really think it’s an individual choice.”

Shanyn Grenier, the college and career counselor at Merrimack Valley High School, said multiple factors – with cost being a primary one – explain why so many students leave New Hampshire for school.

“Unless I qualify for a Pell Grant and can get my tuition free, for some kids if they do their research and they’re a little bit adventurous … they can find deals in other places,” Grenier said.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, the deal-searching process has led Caswell – whose family has a lower income – to private schools, and Duppong – whose family won’t qualify for significant need-based aid – to public schools in other states.

Though elite private schools generally have the highest sticker price, in recent years some of them have offered free tuition to families who have incomes as high as $140,000.

“That was my ethos going into this process: to limit my tuition as much as I can because I don’t want to be a burden to my parents financially,” Caswell said.

Duppong’s family will not qualify for those need-based thresholds, he said, so he is targeting merit-based aid at public universities. He estimates that they will cost about one-third more than UNH but he feels that is a worthwhile investment – in part because of the physical amenities, such as nuclear reactors and quantum computers, that they have, and in part because of the people.

“If you attend one of these colleges that has a network, then you have far more opportunities,” Duppong said. “You will have a greater chance of getting a job in a field like physics, so I would say that’s worth the extra cost.”

Grenier said that Caswell and Duppong have targeted their college lists to their families’ specific financial situations more than most students, but that it makes sense for some students to do so.

“What those two children are trying to do is a great example of how to try and make the system that’s kind of gotten out of control work the best for their individual circumstances,” said Grenier, whose own daughter chose to attend a public university in the South this year in part because the merit aid she received made it about as expensive as UNH.

Incentives to stay?

Newly-elected state Rep. Sanjeev Manohar, a Nashua Democrat, believes it is time to address that system to incentivize talented students to stay in the state.

Manohar, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts–Lowell, said he noticed that many of his students were coming from just across the border in Nashua.

“Families are moving here, while our students are moving out,” he said in an interview. “It’s kind of weird.”

Manohar has filed a legislative service request that he hopes could help. The bill he has proposed would create a monetary incentive of between $500 and $750 for students to attend college in New Hampshire, as well as a monetary incentive for businesses to hire in-state residents after they graduate.

“I see this as not political at all,” Manohar said. “I think both parties can benefit from a program like this.”

Manohar has a vision that southern New Hampshire – from Concord to Nashua – can ultimately become a biotech corridor for the region.

“The attraction of Massachusetts and Connecticut will be diminished a little bit if we become the tech hub ourselves,” he said.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.