A cooperative agreement among six universities and colleges in New Hampshire guarantees a pathway for students to earn four-year degrees by first starting at any of the state’s community colleges.
The agreement, announced earlier this year, initially included Colby-Sawyer College, Franklin Pierce University, Keene State College, New England College and Plymouth State University, then was later expanded to include the state’s flag-ship, the University of New Hampshire.
Called the New Hampshire Transfer Guarantee, a program of the New England Board of Higher Education, the agreement assures Granite State students who earn an associate degree and who meet the required grade point average are guaranteed admission to the participating college or university of their choice.
The agreement is seen in a couple of lights: as a way for students to more affordably get a four-year degree by first starting at a community college that is less expensive than a four-year institution, and as a way to perhaps stabilize and even bolster enrollments at the two-year and four-year colleges/universities in the state.
“The New Hampshire Transfer Guarantee is a big step forward in simplifying transfer with the goal of helping students stay on track to earn the bachelor’s degree they seek,” Debby Scire, president and CEO of the New Hampshire College & University Council, said on the occasion of the announcement in June.
“The program removes barriers that previously slowed students down, discouraged them or involved extra expense, such as losing earned credits in the transfer process which added both cost and time to degree,” Scire added.
Here are the key elements of the program:
- Students with an associate degree from a New Hampshire community college and who meet the required grade point average are guaranteed admission at the 4-year institution they choose.
- The application fee and personal essay requirement are waived.
- Transferring students are considered for institutional support in the form of grants and scholarships. (This aid is usually available only to first-time, first-year students.)
“The New Hampshire Transfer Guarantee provides a clear pathway for students who have earned an associate degree and who want to build on that credential to achieve a four-year degree,” said Mark Rubinstein, chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire. “What is often a complex process for prospective transfer students can be replaced with clarity about students’ options and a streamlined admissions process.”
The state’s community college system is made up of seven two-year colleges and five academic centers throughout the Granite State, offering more than 200 degree and certificate programs.
According to the New England Board of Higher Education, numerous transfer agreements have existed for New Hampshire community college students over the years, but the New Hampshire Transfer Guarantee outlines specific pathways to the participating institutions.
A wider New England Transfer Guarantee was initiated in 2021 in the southern New England states, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island with support from the Teagle Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the Davis Educational Foundation. The Balfour Foundation has come on board to support the efforts to include northern New England.
According to Kimberly DeRego, the vice provost of enrollment management at the University of New Hampshire (UNH), the program telegraphs an economic and efficient path to a four-year degree to high school students who currently see too many barriers to a degree.
“It signals to those students that the courses they take at the community colleges, and if they graduate with that associate degree, if they fulfill the requirements of that associate degree, they are guaranteed admission,” said DeRego. “There is no question that they will be admitted to the University of New Hampshire, and that’s a big step, because that really tells them that when you start this journey and do make this investment, you will have a seat at your public flagship institution.”
UNH’s entrance to the Transfer Guarantee was a few steps behind the other New Hampshire schools, including the other members of the University System of New Hampshire, Plymouth State and Keene State.
That’s because, according to DeRego, of the vast variety of academic programs offered by UNH. It took a bit more time to sort out the pathways and courses a two-year student at a community college would have to take in order to then continue on in a specific engineering program at UNH, for example.
“It was really in the best interest of the student and the time to degree, making it much more likely they could actually get out in four years, if we said we are going to look program by program and make sure we’re providing the most efficient pathway as possible,” said DeRego. “And so we basically had to come up with those. We have almost 100 different pathways in different programs that a student can follow to have the most efficient path to their degree.”
In terms of the effect on enrollments, DeRego sees an immediate benefit for community colleges and a long-term benefit for the four-year institutions.
Over the years, according to DeRego, has monitored the college-age population and what they’ve done about higher education after high school.
“About 15% of that population doesn’t go to any higher education, be it community college or four-year,” said DeRego. “And that’s a big chunk of the population who wanted to go to college, and for one reason or another, often affordability, decide that they’re not going to go. So we really want to make that population aware that this can be a path for them.”
The Transfer Guarantee program might be particularly appealing to first-generation college students in the New England region. According to DeRego, about 50% of the college-eligible population in the region is made up of students who would be the first in their families to attend college.
The particular demographic saw a decline in UNH’s enrollment among freshmen for the current academic year.
“The fact that our first-year class is only 19% first gen gives us concern. We want to be supporting those families more, and we want to help them,” said DeRego. “Going to college for a first-generation student is one of the most important things that can be done for social mobility. We see that as a part of our mission, particularly for the students in the state of New Hampshire, is to help with that social mobility.”
There’s been a trend of declining enrollments among first-year students over the last several years at UNH, the state’s largest public university. The following comes from UNH as provided to the town of Durham, home to the UNH campus:
- 2018: 3,083
- 2019: 2,786
- 2020: 2,692
- 2021: 2,862
- 2022: 2,993
- 2023: 2,660
- 2024: 2,648
The University of New Hampshire’s current total enrollment of undergrads is in excess of 11,500 students. It had an undergraduate enrollment of 11,387 in the fall 2023.
DeRego blamed the reworked but flawed FAFSA this year for the decline in first-generation students at UNH.
FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a free application that helps students determine if they are eligible for federal financial aid for college. The botched roll-out of what was to have been an improved online system affected thousands of would-be students nationwide, according to media reports.
“Our percentage of first-generation went down from the last two years,” said DeRego. “And the working theory of that is that that really was because of the FAFSA. It was really first-generation students who suffered the most because the process was so late and so confusing that those first-generation students had a harder time.”
At Keene State, the current freshman class is also down slightly from the previous year — to 696 from 728. Meanwhile, the overall enrollment is up to 2,827 from last year’s 2,805.
“In addition to retention efforts that are helping to bolster enrollment, we also had a significant increase in transfer students to begin this academic year. That is the result of work the college has done to streamline the transfer process and stepped-up collaboration with the Community College System of New Hampshire,” said Paul Miller, the school’s director of strategic communications.
Plymouth State, too, expects the transfer program will help enrollment.
“Like many higher education institutions, Plymouth State University’s enrollment was slightly down in fall 2024 from fall 2023. We are, however, encouraged by the positive response we have seen so far in the fall 2025 recruitment cycle,” said Joanne Landers, the university’s vice president for enrollment management and communications. She noted an open house at the school on Nov. 9 had one of the highest turnouts in many years.
“We expect our participation in the NEBHE transfer guarantee program to help increase the number of transfer students, and we also recently announced our 96-credit, three-year Applied Bachelor’s degree programs, which will positively impact numbers overall,” Landers added.
The school announced on Nov. 8 that it is introducing a 3-year undergraduate program for applied bachelor’s degrees in business administration, cybersecurity, outdoor adventure leadership, police studies and robotics.
School officials said a 3-year program lessens costs and fast-tracks students toward high-demand jobs.
