College students are reportedly streaming to a specific region in the United States, and it’s not to the Northeast, where many of the allegedly “elite” campuses are located. It’s not Harvard or Columbia or the University of Pennsylvania that are seeing the surge — it’s the Deep South.

Many of the Ivy League and Ivy League adjacent top schools have seen their reputations battered by violent antisemitic protests on their campuses, sky-high tuitions, woke, far-left professors spouting hatred, an obsessive focus on discriminatory diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and the general sense that they sneer at most of America.

Many applicants are headed elsewhere:

Where young people used to travel to the well-to-do corners of New England for higher education, increasing numbers now want to attend state schools in the South — Alabama, Clemson, the University of Mississipi (“Ole Miss”), Tennessee, Charleston, Elon — drawn by good weather, exciting football, beautiful campuses and viral social media videos of game-day parties and sorority dance routines.

According to analysis of government data by The Sunday Times, universities belonging to the Southeastern Conference — there are 16, including USC — recorded a 91 per cent rise in undergraduate students from northeastern states in a decade from 2014 to 2023. USC’s enrolments went up 90 per cent in the same period.

The trend has been ongoing for some time now:

More and more stories about students heading south to enjoy college and avoid the “radical politics and stifling political correctness that has come to define the campuses of elite schools in the Northeast and on the West Coast.”

“A recent Wall Street Journal report found that… pic.twitter.com/y4VXX57VZz

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 1, 2025

“A recent Wall Street Journal report found that the number of Northerners going to Southern public schools has risen 84% over the past two decades, and jumped 30% from 2018 to 2022.”

“Meanwhile, surveys of recent data from the Common Application…shows that applications to colleges in the South are up 50% since 2019. That compares to a rise of less than 30% for schools located in New England and the Mid-Atlantic.”

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The trend is only continuing:

This year USC [no, not the University of Southern California, but the University of South Carolina] had its highest ever enrolments — more than 40,000 students — largely aided by its recruitment of young people from other states. Out-of-state admissions have increased by 58 per cent over the past decade, mostly from the northeast, while the total student population has increased by 46 per cent. The biggest feeder states are New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Yankees go south: Why Gen Z is trading New England winters for Ole Miss game days

The immersive and popular Greek Life community is a major draw for these schools, as well as festive football games and mild winters, with students lured by dazzling TikTok videos. Another perk?…

— The College Fix (@CollegeFix) November 24, 2025

Another perk? The positivity is high, and divisive politics is low. It’s less “in your face,” one admissions counselor said about the political vibes on Southern schools.

One student explained Monday why he thinks southern institutions are experiencing such increased popularity:

"Down here, people care more about family, God and country, and you don’t see a lot of that up in the Northeast," Auburn University student [also the school's Turning Point USA president ] Jacob Roose said Monday.

Roose joined "Fox & Friends First" alongside University of Miami student Angel Aguilar to react to reports that schools in the American South – including those in states like Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and Mississippi – are receiving a massive influx of students from the Northeast.

Roose said politics, culture and a sense of belonging all play a role in the shift, noting that many students are drawn to the values and slower pace of life found on Southern campuses, while Aguilar pointed to academic excellence as one major factor driving students south.

To many conservatives, many of the so-called elite schools are emblematic of cultural rot and intolerance of any viewpoint that isn’t sufficiently leftist. There’s a way to counter them: don’t go there. Students, clearly, are figuring that out. 

The nation’s elite academic institutions have lost the plot and become full-on indoctrination centers. 

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