and the Oxford real estate bubble may be about to bust.
www.cissellmanagement.com
Highlights
In March of last year, Chancellor Boyce stood up in front of a student government meeting and said the freshman class was exploding, that applications were over 40,000, and that Ole Miss would land somewhere around 6,300 to 6,500 freshmen. He said it plainly enough that the student paper printed the quote. The class that actually showed up that fall was 5,464.
Even on a very good run for the university, the kind where they land the biggest freshman classes they have ever had and hold them, you are talking about a few thousand more students by 2028.
Is Ole Miss Really Growing as Fast as the Headlines Say?
Ole Miss set another enrollment record, but the Oxford numbers tell a different story, one that matters for Oxford real estate and student housing.
www.cissellmanagement.com
Highlights
The record 28,405 is not the Oxford number
Start with the number itself. This past fall the university announced 28,405 students, a state record. That number is real, but it counts seven campuses, and one of them is the Medical Center two and a half hours away in Jackson, which by itself is 3,183 students, residents and fellows.Ole Miss enrollment: real growth, but mostly recovery
People tend to paint Ole Miss and Oxford as if they're an anomaly with only an upward trajectory. But that's not the case. The Oxford campus hit a record high with about 20,500 students in 2016. Then it fell, over four years, to about 18,400 in 2020, a loss of roughly 2,100 students. It did not climb back to its 2016 level until 2023.Almost all the Ole Miss enrollment growth is out-of-state
When you look at where the new students came from, it is striking. On the Oxford campus, in-state enrollment has not grown at all. It has gone backward, from about 11,000 Mississippi students in 2016 to about 10,400 now. Every bit of the growth is out-of-state students, who went from about 9,400 to about 14,700, and they now make up nearly 59 percent of the Oxford campus.In March of last year, Chancellor Boyce stood up in front of a student government meeting and said the freshman class was exploding, that applications were over 40,000, and that Ole Miss would land somewhere around 6,300 to 6,500 freshmen. He said it plainly enough that the student paper printed the quote. The class that actually showed up that fall was 5,464.
What it means for Oxford real estate and student housing
Now put that next to what is going up around town. These are my own working numbers, and they fall into three buckets. At the end of 2025 there were about 7,000 beds already under construction in the city, with dirt moving on them. Then there is the university itself, which has two new on-campus housing projects in the works with Greystar that together add about 2,800 beds, the first about 1,300 beds on the old Kincannon site due by fall 2027, and the second about 1,500 beds near the law school due by the summer of 2028. On top of that, roughly 2,200 more beds have been approved. Add the three together and you are looking at somewhere around 12,000 potential new beds by fall 2028.Even on a very good run for the university, the kind where they land the biggest freshman classes they have ever had and hold them, you are talking about a few thousand more students by 2028.
