Ole Miss Chancellor Glenn Boyce
- University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce is touting the school’s 31% enrollment growth over the last five years. He said applications for the upcoming fall semester have set a new record.
The Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Institutions for Higher Learning were informed last week that enrollment is growing at Mississippi’s largest university.
While universities across the nation are preparing for an enrollment cliff due, in part, to declining birth rates, University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce says enrollment has grown over the past five-years, with the last three breaking records.
During Thursday’s meeting of the IHL Board, Boyce described how from 2020 to 2025 Ole Miss has seen a 31% growth in overall enrollment. He also noted increased enrollment in minority students.
“Here’s one of the things that we are very, very proud of, and that’s that our minority enrollment growth since 2020 has grown by 31 percent,” Boyce said.
The Chancellor stated that the university’s work does not slow down during the summer, saying 12,700 students are currently taking over 250 courses.
Applications for the upcoming fall semester also set a new record, at more than 46,500 submitted. The institution graduated about 6,800 students this year.
Graduation rates in six years at Ole Miss are at 70.3%, which is 9.2 percentage points higher than the national average. Four-year graduation rates are currently at 64%, about 10 percentage points higher than the national average. Chancellor Boyce said the four-year graduation rate is important because when a student graduates sooner, their debt burden is drastically reduced.
“But we haven’t always been there. We’ve been a university like so many other universities in years gone by where the four-year [rate] wasn’t all that good,” Boyce told the IHL Board. “It’s wonderful if students continue on in year five and year six, but it’s better if they get out in year four and keep moving.”
There is also an effort to add Russian to the list of foreign languages offered at Ole Miss to help prepare more students for working abroad in the military or other capacities.
In addition, plans are shaping up to include investment banking to the list of courses offered at Ole Miss, which administrators hope will bring more business to Mississippi. The aim, Boyce said, is to get Mississippians onto Wall Street.
“That’s the vision. They say, ‘Hey, we know Mississippi, we know what we’re capable of.’ They push companies and money back. We’ve got our first class of 20 entering this fall,” Boyce said.
The rise of online betting, including mobile sports betting on cellphones, is a problem Boyce said the Center on Collegiate Gambling is working to address.
“Young people can get into trouble really, really fast,” Boyce explained. “So we decided it was serious enough to open up a center on it.”
Other IHL Business
Mississippi State
During the Academic Affairs portion of the IHL meeting agenda, the Board approved the establishment of the Institute for Nursing Leadership at Mississippi State University.
Associate Commissioner for Academic and Student Affairs Dr. Casey Prestwood said the predicted cost to develop the center over the next five years is $250,000. Funding is expected to come from private donations as well as grants from the federal and state level. The center will focus on addressing healthcare needs by sharing the experience of seasoned nurses through mentorships.
Delta State
Delta State University received IHL Board approval to move current course work from the College of Business and Aviation to the College of Aviation.
The College of Aviation will be housed under the division of academic affairs and cost about $3 million to implement. It will offer three baccalaureate level degrees in management and operations and one Master of Commercial Aviation degree.
“Financially, the restructuring features a zero new implementation cost up front, however over a five-year period cumulative operational expenditures are projected to increase by aproximately $3 million above the initial baseline,” Prestwood described.
Moving the program to its own college is expected to address aviation sector staffing shortages.
Delta State is the only university in Mississippi to offer an aviation program.
Mississippi Valley State
The IHL Board approved the creation of the Bachelor of Science in Business Management at Mississippi Valley State University.
Southern Miss
The creation of the Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry, Bachelor of Science in Physical Education K-12 Teaching, Master of Science in Educational Data Analytics and Master of Science in Strategic Communication in Emerging Media were approved by the IHL Board at the University of Southern Mississippi.
