PORTSMOUTH — One hurdle the University of New Hampshire is expected to face as it tries to better its national standing is the fact the Granite State ranks dead last in state higher education funding.

When asked about that hurdle Wednesday during a meeting with Seacoast Media Group’s editorial board, UNH President James Dean said the university would be well served to have more "humility" when it advocates for additional state support.

"I spend a lot of time in Concord (meeting with legislators and other leaders)," said Dean. "When I went to one of my first meetings, I said, ‘This isn’t working. What can we do differently?’ (They) said, ‘No. 1, show up. No. 2, listen." Which leads me to believe maybe we haven’t been great at listening. In the past, maybe we’ve been trying to talk rather than listening."

New Hampshire’s 50th-ranked state funding for education is a relevant one for UNH for several reasons right now.

UNH is in the process of identifying ways to reallocate resources as part of a $600,000 consultant process. The process is among the tools UNH says it will use in a quest to make itself one of the top 25 public universities in the country in nine key academic areas. According to Dean, the process is expected to yield approximately $12 million to $20 million in benefits to UNH and its $650 million budget. Dean has said some of the savings will come through a yet-to-be-determined number of layoffs and cuts by attrition.

UNH is also in the silent phase of a fledgling capital campaign. Dean disclosed Wednesday that UNH hopes the campaign generates upward of $350 million to $400 million over the next seven years, doubling the university’s existing $300 million endowment. The campaign comes 1½ years after the university finished its last seven-year campaign, which raised a record $308 million for student scholarships and research.

Dean said UNH would be able to better leverage the resources gained through the consultant process and capital campaign, and thus better serve New Hampshire students and businesses, through additional state support.

However, given the idea of an income tax is historically a nonstarter in Concord, Dean said the university will have to deploy other approaches to overcome lawmakers’ reluctance to contribute more toward the state’s flagship university.

"The support for community colleges is higher, quite a bit higher," said Dean, a relative newcomer to UNH, having been appointed president on June 30, 2018. "Our state support represents between 5 and 10 percent of our budget. For the community colleges, it’s closer to 50 percent. I think it might be 55 percent. So, there’s clearly some issue there that we are clearly not doing something we should be doing, or are perceived at least that way."

There are signs perceptions involving UNH and its spending could be changing.

This past year, for the first time in five years, the state Legislature increased its base appropriation for the state’s university system. That helped UNH freeze its in-state tuition for 2020-21, which at over $18,000 with fees is among the highest in the country.

Dean acknowledges there’s more work to be done to overcome the perceptions, though. One way could be through new, creative ways to address the state’s more pressing issues.

State leaders have identified things like health care and the workforce as major challenges, particularly in an aging state that struggles to retain college-bound students, struggles to keep college students after graduation, and struggles with complex issues like the opioid crisis.

Lawmakers have already partnered with UNH this year to try to address some of the state’s health care and workforce challenges. It gave UNH an additional $9 million to help the university double its increasingly competitive nursing programs and combat the region’s nurse practioner shortage.

Dean said other UNH programs would be "ripe" for similar initiatives, including several biomedical, technology and business programs.

"It could be any area where the demand is increasingly exceeding supply," he said.

One of UNH’s goals of its $600,000 consultant process will be to leverage resources that will allow the university to increase its yield rate of students most likely to enroll, increase its financial aid to students, and increase its research funding.

It’s unknown how things will play out in any of these areas, given that the university just recently formed the internal teams to implement changes based on the consulting firm’s findings.

That said, Dean believes these areas have the potential to directly address the Granite State’s biggest challenges. He also believes they will help address UNH’s overall affordability and prestige, which would in turn increase enrollment and help the university better overcome the limitations in its state funding.

"I have a friend who wrote a book, and the slogan of the book is that talent is universal and opportunity is not," said Dean. "Public universities, at their best, bring opportunities to talented people and opportunities at a financial level that hopefully are manageable, and I know that’s a challenge for us. That’s sort of the way I feel about what we do. We want our students to be able to pursue their dreams and fulfill their potential, and we think they can do that at UNH. That’s really where a lot of the metrics come from."