Welcome to New Hampshire's Business. I'm Fred Coker, New Hampshire's Public Colleges and universities. Full time, full enrollment, fall enrollments are fall are down at UN H K State, Plymouth State and Granite State. According to an audit in 2022 at the same time, their tuitions have been frozen for five years back with me from the six. hour to comment on both of these is the president of the University of New Hampshire, who's also the chancellor of the university system of New Hampshire James Dean Junior. Welcome. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Nice to have you here. Um Let me put *** graphic up on the screen and uh this graphic shows full time, full employment. uh enrollment, not employment enrollment at the various campuses in the university system that was reported in an audit of the system in 2022. And here you can see University of New Hampshire 2018 compared to 2022 down Plymouth State. Uh again 2018 to 2022. Down Key State. The same Granite State, the same Have those enrollments gone up since the audit? I would say that our entering classes are going up, but the overall numbers aren't going up because we have *** number of classes of people who came in before COVID, which are larger and those students are graduating and while the freshman classes are getting bigger, they're not getting big enough to offset those declines. There are fewer graduates from our high schools. I know and you know, as well is that part of it? It's the biggest part of it, right. So, nationally, Uh the number of students entering colleges are down uh in 2008 when we had the great recession, families started having fewer Children and that's reflected in the demographics of schools now. Uh down by about 20%. And uh still coming our way in 2026 is what they call the waterfall 2008 plus 18 Let me turn to the 2022 23 state costs and we'll go to this graphic to um attend the campuses of the university system that are currently listed on each college website. Uh University of New Hampshire tuition, you can see 15 5 20 the total cost 34 978. And you can see the numbers for Keen State College, Plymouth State University and Granite State College. All of those costs include room board and fees. I'm aware that your financial aid has gone up but has it been able to reduce those costs that have been displayed on the websites of these colleges Yes, we have been able to reduce those costs. Uh we've been giving increased financial aid about $20 million 11,000 down to about 10.2,010.2, which is very competitive. Yes. Um I'm aware that uh you know, tuition freezes the last five years have been in place and I think *** lot of people in New Hampshire know that. Well, they continue. Well, we hope so. We've committed to not increasing tuition next year already and beyond that, it really depends on the level of support we can get from the state. Uh We've done an awful lot to try and reduce costs, reducing uh services uh that we purchase reducing goods that we purchased? Uh shrinking the head count for the university system pretty considerably. Uh But at this point, we really need some additional partnership with the state to be able to keep tuition down and you, you would like to keep the freeze on. We would, we'd like to keep it on indefinitely. Yeah. Yeah. Ok. One of your strategic priorities, the University of New Hampshire uh system, uh one of them is called embrace New Hampshire that caught my attention. Uh You've alluded to it *** little bit perhaps. What does that look like? Well, embrace New Hampshire is really celebrating our partnership with the state and trying to form closer relationships with various groups in the state, in particular, with elected officials in Concord with the K 12 systems, who's obviously the feeder for many of our students and also for. the business community. And so we want to make sure that we're staying close with all of them for reasons, I imagine are obvious. Yeah, reasons are obvious. That's right. Um Well, my thanks to James Dean, president of the University of New Hampshire and Chancellor of the University System of New Hampshire. Um and if you missed this briefing and the one at six o'clock, they're both going to be at W M U R dot com. Will it be posted all this week?