beat out by New Mexico State Univ ($137.5M), U of Central Florida ($126.7M), Montana State Univ ($125.9M), and Utah State Univ ($118.7M).

Incidentally, all 5 are research intensive.

beat Lehigh Univ ($39.4M), Teachers College at Columbia Univ ($38.8M), U of Texas at San Antonio ($35.9M), and Jackson State Univ ($31.6M), and others, ending with Prescott College ($0.0K).

11 out of the other 128 colleges were ruled out due to missing, unknown, or not-applicable values for research spending, e.g., U of Phoenix-Online Campus.

1. Spending on research and public services is from the Finance Data File 2009 (Revised March 2012) as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds).
   
2. Information on majors and programs of study is from the Completions Data File, 2011-12 (Provisional release) as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds). Top majors are the ones that have the most conferred degrees. If it says "is in" rather than just "is", then various top majors were combined into a new attribute. For example, colleges whose top major is "in engineering" will include a college whose top major is chemical engineering, another whose top major is electrical engineering, and so on.
   

U of Southern Mississippi is in Hattiesburg, MS, is public, is in the Conference USA, research intensive, has a nursing major, has its top Doctoral major in education, has its top major in nursing, offers on-campus housing, plays division I/FBS football, requires test scores for undergrad admissions, is on the semester system, its top Masters major is social work, and enrolls from 10,000 to 19,999 students.

• Forbes Best Buy ranking (71st place)
• PayScale mid-career median salary ranking (734th place)
• Webometrics world ranking (799th place)
• research spending ($47.6M)
• average full-time teaching salary ($64,325)
• out-of-state undergrad tuition & fees ($14,448)
• average grant aid to undergrads ($8,411)
• cost of typical room and board ($6,907)
• average undergrad student loan ($6,370)
• in-state undergrad tuition & fees ($6,336)
• endowment per full-time student ($4,598)
• research spending per student ($2,449)
• non-resident tuition & fees surcharge (128%)
• undergrads who get financial aid (97%)
• undergrads among full-time students (82.9%)
• full-time retention rate (75%)
• in-state freshmen (70.3%)
• undergrads who receive student loans (67%)
• ratio of female full-time freshmen (66.5%)
• undergrads who get Pell grants (49%)
• minorities (31.7%)
• Blacks or African Americans (27.6%)
• undergrads who are 25 years or older (22.9%)
• grad students who are under 25 years old (20.9%)
• average teaching salary differential (men vs. women, 15.5%)
• tuition & fees increase over three years (13.4%)
• Hispanics (2.6%)
• foreign students (1.8%)
• Asians (1.2%)
• American Indians or Alaska Natives (0.3%)
• average teaching salary differential (women vs. men, -13.5%)
• 25th percentile SAT math score (460)
• 25th percentile SAT reading score (453)
• 75th percentile SAT math score (570)
• 75th percentile SAT reading score (580)
• alumni who played in the National Football League (106)
• average January temperature (48.0 degrees)
• dorm capacity (3,415)
• first-year applicants (7,099)
• foreign students (359)
• full-time grad students (1,411)
• full-time undergrads (11,393)
• grad students (2,810)
• members of the National Academy of Sciences (0)
• men's basketball Final Four appearances (0)
• Rhodes Scholar alumni (0)
• undergrads (13,658)
• yearly for-credit students (19,418)
• on-campus yearly property crimes per thousand students (0.7)
• students per faculty member (18)
• annual rainfall (61.6 inches)
• diversity and inclusion ratio (0.08)
• elevation (66 meters)

Sources