USM Gulf Park shuts down over a dozen undergrad programs amid enrollment declines

More than a dozen undergraduate programs at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Park campus have shut down or will be phased out in the next few years as school leaders confront challenges of declining enrollment.

The university said the move will shift Gulf Park’s focus from traditional academic majors to targeted programs intended to place graduates in growing job fields across the Mississippi Coast.

The decision is ending programs including math, English, history and political science.

University leaders said Gulf Park is adapting to the reality that most coastal students attend local community colleges for their first two years of undergraduate school. Southern Miss President Joseph Paul said Gulf Park’s enrollment has “declined dramatically” over the last decade, and some impacted programs had classes with fewer than 10 students.

“The primary reason for closing those programs on the Coast,” he said, “is they were just chronically under-enrolled.”

The decision to end the programs is the latest shift at Gulf Park, which has faced criticism in recent years over enrollment challenges in one of the state’s fastest-growing regions. The school announced a major reorganization in 2020 and said Gulf Park would focus on ocean sciences to support the Coast’s maritime economies. Paul said the university is also trying to attract more students by targeting programs toward other growing sectors, including healthcare and education.

Board of trustees members at Mississippi’s Institutions of Higher Learning were not available for comment this week. John Sewell, the director of communications, said in a statement that Southern Miss “reviewed programs to ensure alignment with IHL degree plans, provide course offerings with a proven demand, and maximize course quality along with faculty resources.”

“The focus is on providing students on the Gulf Coast with the best courses for their career interests,” Sewell said.

Enrollment challenges

The university said twelve programs at Gulf Park are closed to new enrollment and will end once currently-enrolled students complete their degrees. Five programs have already ended.

The decision is one sign of a challenge emerging for small colleges as enrollment drops across the country. National undergraduate enrollment rose last spring but remained below pre-COVID-19 pandemic rates.

Recent enrollment data at Gulf Park was not immediately available. Just over 1,000 students were pursuing a degree at Gulf Park in fall 2021, according to data obtained by Mississippi Today the next year.

The university’s small satellite campus in Long Beach has long served as a path to degrees for students who cannot or do not want to leave the Coast. Paul estimated Gulf Park’s enrollment peaked in the 1990s. He said this week that the campus “still has a critical mission to provide coastal academic programs for coastal people for coastal jobs.”

The university said leaders told school directors and faculty about the changes last fall. Many of the impacted programs will still be offered online or at the Hattiesburg campus.

Paul said students have understood the need to change campus offerings. Faculty who teach courses in the affected programs are still employed, and some may shift to online teaching options or commute to Hattiesburg. Paul acknowledged that the changes may be difficult for some faculty.

“When you change direction a little bit, or change the profile of what folks are doing, there naturally can be some angst in that,” he said. “But we’ve communicated this clearly. Everybody’s still with us.”

Gulf Park shifts focus

The campus now offers 12 undergraduate programs, including film studies, psychology, business administration, and elementary and secondary education. Several of the remaining programs also focus on ocean studies: They include marine biology, ocean engineering, and oceanography and ocean mapping.

The 12 undergraduate programs closed to new enrollment also include social work, geography and criminal justice. The five programs that have already ended are accounting, management, marketing, sustainability sciences and sustainability studies.

Many of the remaining programs are part of a new scholarship announced last year that intends to help students at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and Pearl River Community College transition to Gulf Park. University leaders said many of Gulf Park’s remaining programs focus on junior and senior-level course work.

Southern Miss also said it is adding and growing some programs at Gulf Park, including an accelerated bachelor of science in nursing degree and a physician assistant program set to launch in 2027.

The school relocated its marine biology program to Gulf Park in 2022. It also consolidated its marine science and hydrography degree plans into the oceanography and ocean mapping program last fall.

Increasing enrollment is also critical for Gulf Park’s finances. Paul said the satellite campus has been operating at a deficit and deals with unique wind and flood insurance expenses.

The shift, he added, “is very much a strategic, mission-driven decision to best serve the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”