On the front page of Mississippi State University’s website, a story that has continued to flash for the last four years and nine months is the Carnegie Foundation’s designation of “very high research activity” at MSU.
MSU was the only public institution in the state that received the designation back in January of 2011. 108 other universities have received the award, including Harvard, Princeton, John Hopkins among others.
MSU has continued to publicize this designation for four years in various outlets including view books, newsletters, front page of the MSU website and other merchandise. 
Sid Salter, chief communications officer at MSU, said the University continues to be Mississippi’s leading research university and has held that designation for a number of years.
“We value timeliness. But when it comes to advancing MSU’s superlatives, we also value repetition,” Salter said.
 
According to the story published on Jan. 26, 2011 titled, “MSU hits ‘very high research activity’ benchmark” which continues to remain on the front page of MSU website even today, the article states, “In the foundation’s latest analysis of American higher education, the state’s largest public institution of higher learning is designated as “a very high research activity university,” which represents the highest level of research activity for doctorate-granting universities in the U.S.”
David Shaw, vice  president for Research and Economic Development at MSU, said it is not a competition between universities, but rather continuing to meet the criteria they have established.
“We still do hold this designation, so it is certainly legitimate that we continue to publicize the designation,” Shaw said, “As a part of MSU’s strategic plan, we continually are assessing both qualitative and quantitative measures of our research success.  We are on a very positive trajectory, as you have seen with the many success stories and announcements that OPA has released over the past couple of years.”
According to the article, “The Carnegie classification has been the leading framework for recognizing and describing institutional diversity in U.S. higher education for the past four decades. 
In FY 2010, the university secured $201 million in external research funding. In its most recent reporting of academic research and development expenditures (FY 2008), the National Science Foundation ranked Mississippi State 58th among public institutions for total R&D spending. Among all institutions–public and private–the university’s expenditures in agricultural sciences ranked 7th nationally with engineering 34th.”
 On the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education website there is a footnote which said, “All-inclusive classifications are time-specific snapshots of institutional attributes and behavior based on data from 2008 to 2010. Institutions might be classified differently using a different timeframe,” it said.
 Salter said as Mississippi’s flagship research university, that designation is the signature superlative of the university.
“It’s important for new visitors to the MSU site to be made aware of (the designation). We will continue to keep that fact in our front page rotation on the site,” he said.
 According to the Carnegie Institutions of Higher Education website, 
“Starting in 1970, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education developed a classification of colleges and universities to support its program of research and policy analysis. Derived from empirical data on colleges and universities, the Carnegie Classification was originally published in 1973, and subsequently updated in 1976, 1987, 1994, 2000, 2005 and 2010 to reflect changes among colleges and universities. This framework has been widely used in the study of higher education, both as a way to represent and control for institutional differences, and also in the design of research studies to ensure adequate representation of sampled institutions, students, or faculty.”