The University of Southern Mindanao (USM) is a premier land-grant university in the southern Philippines. Formerly known as the Mindanao Institute of Technology (MIT), USM was founded by the late Bai Hadja Fatima Matabay Plang, a dedicated Muslim educator and philanthropist.
USM officially commenced operations on 1 October 1954 and attained university status through Presidential Decree No. 1312 on 13 March 1978. It is recognized as one of the country's four leading state universities for excellence in agricultural education. Today, USM is among the nine institutions, out of approximately 120 state universities and colleges (SUCs), that have attained Level IV status.
In the first half of 2005, USM received a rating of "Very Satisfactory" from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Regional Office XII, using the same assessment instrument applied in the accreditation process.
USM has a total land area of 5,129.97 hectares, distributed across three campuses: the Kabacan Main Campus (1,024 hectares), the Arakan Valley Campus (4,091 hectares), and the USM-Kidapawan City Campus (14.97 hectares). Most of this land is devoted to agricultural projects.