Somehow this blueprint for success has worked for decades:

A state that contributes the lowest amount of public funding to higher education per capita than nearly every state in the union still manages to have a higher percentage of people with college degrees than just about anywhere else.

A state with a tax structure that makes it unable to offer significant financial incentives to lure companies relies instead on its high quality of life, natural beauty and relatively low cost of doing business, thus fueling a diverse economy that counts tourism, health care, aerospace and high technology, and manufacturing among its key sectors.

A state that captures a disproportionate share of national attention and advertising dollars during election time, thanks to its status as a maverick whose population can’t be counted on by Republicans or Democrats. Make them work for those votes, these independent folks say.

And, hey, it’s a hip place to live with a vibrant arts culture. In this state you can live in rural areas with nature in your backyard yet still have access to the first-class entertainment, fine dining and major league sports of a big city.

Yes, Colorado is a fine place indeed.

You should have known I wasn’t talking about the Granite State. After all, New Hampshire doesn’t contribute the lowest amount of public funding per capita than nearly every state in the union. It’s dead last, while Colorado is merely 49th. And despite our proximity to Boston and the emergence of a few funky gourmet restaurants in our downtowns in recent years, few would call New Hampshire a hip place to live (unless you live in Portsmouth.)

And that may be part of our problem. As a state, we’re getting older and having a harder time attracting new blood and growing our own. Colorado and New Hampshire can boast those higher education numbers not because they do a great job producing graduates but because they largely import them from other states. In Colorado, that in-migration tends to come from 20- and 30-somethings who want to ski in the Rockies. In New Hampshire, it’s more likely to come from folks who are ready to settle down a bit and want to raise a family in a safe, nurturing environment.

When I moved from New Hampshire to Colorado in 1986 to study at the University of Colorado (where I augmented my UNH English degree with graduate work in journalism), I was leaving a state with the lowest unemployment rate in the country, little more than 2 percent, to the state with the highest, hovering around 8 percent.

More than 25 years later, Colorado’s unemployment rate is once again around 8 percent, tracking close to the national rate, while New Hampshire can tout one of the lowest rates in the country, at 5.7 percent.

So how come Colorado ranks among the top 10 states to do business while New Hampshire barely makes the top 20? CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business ranked Colorado No. 8 this year, while New Hampshire was No. 19. Certainly not a bad showing, but that New Hampshire Advantage has lost some of its luster.

Compared to the state’s economic steamroller decades beginning in the late 1970s, growth has slowed down in recent years, according to a report released last week by the New Hampshire Center of Public Policy Studies. We’re losing ground in our labor force, capital investment and worker productivity, according to economist Dennis Delay, who shared some of the study’s findings at a Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Seems the blueprint for success may not have been a real plan at all, more like a natural advantage that over time has begun to wash away like the face on the Old Man of the Mountain. We weren’t able to save his face, and we’ll need a good plan to save our own.

Mike Cote is business editor at the Union Leader. Contact him at 668-4321, ext. 324 or mcote@unionleader.com.