Mississippi University for Women grew in enrollment by more than 8% since fall 2024, the largest increase in nearly a decade for the university.
It also marks the largest percentage increase among the state’s eight public universities since last fall.
“It’s been a while coming,” MUW President Nora Miller told The Dispatch. “I think we finally got some momentum behind what we were doing, and it was the hard work of (the) enrollment management team, of our faculty, who were out there recruiting students. … Seeing that success was really encouraging.”
The Mississippi Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning released data Monday outlining enrollment growth among Mississippi’s eight public universities.
For the first time since fall 2019 MUW grew in total students attending the university. MUW added 173 more students to last fall’s total of 2,193.
Overall Mississippi’s public universities grew in enrollment from 79,817 students last fall to 81,961 this fall, according to Mississippi’s Institutions of Higher Learning’s website.
David Brooking, the executive director of enrollment management, said the improvement at The W came about from changes made to the university’s marketing statewide along with strengthening admission efforts at community colleges and high schools.
Typically the university largely pulls in new enrollment from transfer students but this year the university placed more of an intentional effort on speaking with high school students, Brooking said.
“(We) focused on freshmen, we started doing counselor lunches all throughout the state. So most universities do those in their local area, but last year we went to … six different places all throughout the state of Mississippi to make connections with high school counselors,” Brooking said. “… So we’re just really trying to build connections all throughout the state. Our ground game is really where I think we’re seeing a lot of return.”
Brooking said other efforts included attending a significant amount of college fairs last year and giving tours to prospective students. Those campus tours, he said, helped to give a concrete idea of what the university was like even if those students didn’t apply to the university out of high school.
“Not everybody’s going to come to us straight away,” Brooking said. “There are 15 community colleges in the state of Mississippi, and they’re a very affordable option for a lot of people who don’t want to go to a university starting out. And if we don’t get them that first time, we hopefully will get them to come around later.”
In their current numbers for this fall enrollment the campus saw the largest increases to MUW’s college of business and the school of education, Brooking said.
The enrollment office is still waiting to receive a more comprehensive breakdown on the census data but typically The W has about one-third of its campus taking courses entirely online, Brooking said.
Miller and Brooking agreed the goal now is to build on this turn around and place a focus on continued growth next fall.
“What we’re focused on now is fall 2026, we want to continue to kind of hone in,” Miller said. “We’ve learned what works. We’ve learned … that you have to have certain things all in place for it to really be able to get traction and take off. So I think we can make some wise decisions about where we concentrate our resources going forward.”
The IHL report shows MUW in seventh-place in enrollment among the state’s public universities, up from last place in fall 2024.
Ole Miss boasted the largest enrollment at 28,405, while the smallest enrollment is 2,276 students at Mississippi Valley State University.
Mississippi State’s enrollment grew nearly 2% to 23,563 and ranks second in the state.
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