University system doesn't take noncitizens over residents, chancellor says
Keene State College, Plymouth State University and the University of New Hampshire have a total 109 noncitizen students out of 21,427 enrolled this spring semester, according to numbers released in response to state Rep. Joe Sweeney's accusations that the state is admitting nonresidents at an alarming rate and denying admission to qualified residents.
'Students are denied admission if they are not academically prepared,' University System of New Hampshire Chancellor Catherine Provencher said in a written statement Wednesday. 'The last thing we want to do is have students paying tuition and possibly taking on debt if we do not think they will succeed academically. We do not admit any students from outside of New Hampshire at the expense of our Granite State students.'
The number of in-state undergraduate students actually increased 2.8% last fall across the University System after 12 straight years of decline, officials said. The number of nonresident students, however, continued to fall.
New Hampshire's university system doesn't accept noncitizens over residents, chancellor says
State Rep. Joe Sweeney, R-Salem, has questioned the admissions policies in the University System of New Hampshire. USNH Chancellor Catherine Provencher said his accusations of favoring international and noncitizen students over residents is off-base.
Sweeney, a Salem Republican and House deputy majority leader, has questioned the system's admission policy, filing at least two Right-to-Know Law requests, and has continued to criticize the university system.
'New Hampshire taxpayer funded colleges and universities are denying New Hampshire Residents admission while encouraging illegals to apply. This is just wrong!' Sweeney said in April after he launched the second request for records.
The total number of international students — those attending from foreign countries on visas, separate from the 109 noncitizens — at Keene State, Plymouth State and UNH is 649. Sweeney contends that the university system accepted those students instead of 742 New Hampshire residents who were denied admission.
Provencher said Sweeney is wrong and left out an important detail: Of those 742 who were not accepted, many had applied to more than state college or university, and many now attend one of the schools.
Thirty-five percent of residents who applied to one state school also applied to at least one other, according to the USNH.
'In fact, USNH accepted 95.2% of New Hampshire resident students to at least one institution over the past four fall terms. The number of students denied admission to any institution over the past four fall terms was 1,083 individuals (4.8%) out of 22,557 applicants,' Provencher's statement said.
Sweeney doubles down
Sweeney released a written response Wednesday afternoon in which he doubled down on his criticism of the USNH.
He said three of the 109 noncitizen students are 'either undocumented or under temporary immigration protections' and threatened to have campus police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 'restore accountability' if USNH officials didn't take his objections to their admissions policy seriously.
'USNH is publicly encouraging illegal aliens to apply and rewarding them with in-state tuition,' Sweeney wrote.
Sweeney has based his disputed accusations on partial text from one sentence in a small section of a secondary UNH admissions web page concerning the policy for nonresident students. The section he continues to quote is not on the main admissions page – admissions.unh.edu.
'DACA applicants' is the 18th of 19 subsections of the that inside webpage for admission and reads in full:
'UNH encourages the application and enrollment of undocumented students and students granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to contribute to an environment of inclusive excellence where all students, faculty, and staff can thrive. DACA students are students that came to the U.S. as children and meet guidelines in which they can work/study in the United States. It is the student's responsibility to contact the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to request consideration of DACA. This determination is not made by the University of New Hampshire. DACA students are not eligible for financial aid.'
To read the entire page, visit admissions.unh.edu/application-decisions.
Sweeney did not respond to a phone call seeking clarification of his claims.
Plenty of room in USNH
Enrollment fell 11% from 2020 to 2024 with 2,709 fewer students enrolled in state colleges and universities, according to data from USNH. There's plenty of room for more state residents who are qualified, officials said.
In fact, enrollment has decreased by 19% at Keene State and nearly 16% at Plymouth State during that time. Enrollment went up by 93 among the two UNH campuses from 2020 to 2024, but that's mostly due to Granite State College closing and about 1,000 of its students being absorbed into UNH Manchester.
The enrollment at the public college level is similar to the statewide drop in kindergarten through 12th grade. From the 2019-2020 school year to the 2024-25 school year, K-12 enrollments fell 8% (13,508 fewer students), according to the state Department of Education.
dpierce@unionleader.com
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