Randy Boyd on the University of Tennessee
Randy Boyd, President of the University of Tennessee, joins Signature Required for a conversation about entrepreneurship, public service, and the role higher education plays in shaping the future of Tennessee. From starting businesses in his early twenties to serving in state government and now leading one of the state’s most important institutions, Randy reflects on the through line that has connected each chapter of his career: a belief that education creates opportunity.
About Randy Boyd
Randy Boyd is the President of the University of Tennessee and a longtime Tennessee entrepreneur, public servant, and advocate for education. A first-generation college graduate and Tennessee native, Randy built his career through business leadership, including founding and growing companies in the technology and consumer products space before transitioning into philanthropy and government service.
Before becoming President of the University of Tennessee, Randy served as Tennessee Commissioner of Economic and Community Development and helped launch major education initiatives focused on college access and workforce preparation. His leadership reflects a consistent commitment to opening doors for more students, supporting economic growth across the state, and finding practical ways to turn bold ideas into lasting impact.
Innovation, Access & Tennessee’s Future
The University of Tennessee plays a central role in the future of the state, not only as a higher education institution, but as a driver of workforce development, research, agriculture, and economic opportunity. Under Randy Boyd’s leadership, the university has focused on expanding access and affordability so more Tennesseans can pursue postsecondary education and graduate prepared to contribute across industries and communities.
That impact reaches far beyond the classroom. Through its campuses, research partnerships, extension services, and statewide presence, the University of Tennessee helps meet the needs of employers, supports innovation, and serves communities in every corner of the state. As Tennessee continues to grow, the university’s mission remains deeply connected to the people it serves, preparing students while helping shape the long-term strength and success of Tennessee itself.
Resources
University of Tennessee
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Tennessee Higher Education Initiatives
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Spencer: Welcome to Signature Required. It is intended for Tennessean by Tennesseans.
Randy Boyd, president of the University of Tennessee. Welcome to Signature Required.
Randy: Honored to be here with you.
Spencer: I have so many things that I want to talk about. About the University of Tennessee. But your history is something that I think we wanna start with first, because you've lived really distinct lives.
You've had an entrepreneurial story, you've had a public service story, and now as president of the University of Tennessee, uh, you have an education story, which has kind of been a through line for you. But I want to take it all the way back. You and I are both born and raised, Tennesseans. Talk to us about the start of your journey as an entrepreneur and, uh, and let's take it from there.
Randy: That was a very diplomatic way of saying I haven't been able to hold down a job [00:01:00] over my career. But yes, there, there is a, a continuum there of passion around education. For my entrepreneurial story, it starts with my father. Uh, I was born, uh, to a entrepreneur. Uh, my friends say that if you look in the dictionary under the word entrepreneur, there's a picture of my dad.
He's now 88 years old and still coming up with big ideas every day. So I, I came by it naturally. So I say my start was growing up in a family with an entrepreneur, uh, leading it. And I started working for him when I was 19 years old. Graduated from ut first one of my family's history to go to college.
Paid my way through. Graduated at age 19, not because I was smart, but because I was cheap. It was just quicker to, I was cheaper to graduate early. Um, worked for my dad for four years and started my own company at age 23.
Spencer: What'd your dad do? What? What's
Randy: my dad's company?
Started off making electric fencing for cattle and horses. And then by the time that I was graduating, he had started making electric bug killers. And my four years with him, was around selling the electric bug killers. It had a mercurial rise and a [00:02:00] mercurial descent, and I left him about the time during the descent,
Spencer: when I looked at your history and saw radio systems corporation, the first instinct that probably people have is to think, oh, this is the Radio Shack guy. But it's not like that's a tie to our favorite childhood memories in a mall or a store. But you do something that I think, or your company did something that.
Uh, it was pretty cool. Why don't you tell us what radio systems actually did?
Randy: Let me go back and say that I had three companies. The first company, uh, was a company which I created my own idea, which was a com of a product called the Storm Alert that gave you advanced warning for tornadoes. Turned out that nobody had a, there was no demand for it, so it failed.
Within the first year, I started a second company, which was a distributing company, selling electric fencing for cattle, horses, my father's products, along with other products that, uh. Farm stores would buy. Uh, sold did that for about eight years and toward the end, my [00:03:00] customers started asking me for this product called The Invisible Fence.
And they said the kind of thing that every salesman likes to hear. Doesn't matter how much it costs, we'll buy as many as you can get. So, uh, long story short, I bet everything I owned on this one idea and it turned out to be a success. We created a product that competed with the visible fence brand. It uses radio technology, not hire, having the money to hire some fancy consulting firm to help me with branding.
I just called it a radio fence because it operated off radios. Later on, we had some good consultants, uh, that gave us some better. I better names like Pet Safe, which became our brand name. And then fortunately for us 15 years later, our company was outselling the original brand, invisible Fence 15 to one, and I was able to go back and buy invisible fence.
Carli: That's amazing. Your product actually saves our hound dog because we adopted a hound that is what they call hard to contain. And so though that technology is still saving the patent family pet, to this day,
Randy: I need to thank you because I'm able to work at the University of Tennessee free of charge because [00:04:00] you're buying our batteries.
So please keep buying batteries.
Carli: So many batteries. Yes. Yes.
Spencer: So from a timeline perspective, give us the years that kind of the entrepreneurial chapter, even though it's. Like any entrepreneur, I don't know that we ever wanna put a conclusion to that, but give us the timeframe so that way I can advance the story into the kind of public service brand.
Randy: Yeah, I think I, I do wanna put a, an exclamation point on that. I've been an entrepreneur in business then I was an entrepreneur in public service, entrepreneur in philanthropy, and now an entrepreneur in higher education. So there's not really, I don't think they, but from the business side actually, I would say my first.
Business was bagging buttons for the Saudi Arabian army while I was in high school. That's a whole story, but we, we probably don't have time for that. So that would start at age. 15 or 16. Um, and then, um, I sold the company in, uh, July of 2020, so that would be the period of which I had the company. But in 2013 I went to work for Governor [00:05:00] Haslam as a special advisor on higher education.
So I still own the company was executive chairman, but um, I was, didn't have a day-to-day role starting in 2013.
Spencer: As. Kind of special advisor to Governor Haslam and then economic Commissioner of Development. Walk us through what the pivot was from entrepreneurship into public service. 'cause we've had a lot of people on the program that have either made that switch or could make that switch.
And a lot of them get the same counsel, which is, if you love being an entrepreneur, you're gonna hate public service. Yeah. Thinking how. Prohibitive and bureaucratic, it all is. So you've really managed to thrive in that transition. And so talk to us about what made you decide after having a business that employed thousands of people, that the public sector, the public service space, was the next one for you.
Randy: Let me do two pivots. [00:06:00] So the first pivot was from, business to philanthropy. So in 2007, I started something called Tennessee Achieves, which sends young people to technical and community college free of tuition and fees. And that was a pivot that I made at one day when I realized that. I had all the money that I would ever need in my life.
Everything that would, uh, that I was making after that was gonna give, go back to a, a, some kind of charity. And I thought, you know, why wait till I die? Might as well start trying to invest now. And as you mentioned earlier, education was a passion, had this. Idea presented to me about having this program to help send kids to technical and community college for free.
I committed to being the chairman of it and put investing in it. It was, uh, very successful. We were able to, by the year 2000, started in 2007 by the year. 2013, we sent 5,000. We're sending 5,000 kids to college every year, free of tuition and fees. Matched with over 2000 mentors. All the money coming from private donations.[00:07:00]
So now we go to the second pivot, and that was public service. Governor Haslum came to me and said, this is a really good idea. Why don't you roll it out across the state. And by the way, I'd like to give you a job in higher education. I won't mention what the job was 'cause it would pilot was taking somebody else's job, but wanna say he offered me a job and my reaction was what many business people would, how they would've reacted.
My reaction was government's too slow. It's too bureaucratic. I can never do that. But he was persistent and, uh, and we made it as a temporary job. I do it just for a year. Uh, I would work for free as a volunteer. Created a title called Special Advisor on Higher Education, and that year we were able to create something called the Tennessee Promise, which took that little nonprofit idea that I had and made it permanent.
We created over a half a billion dollar endowment so that now we can make. It possible for every student in the state of Tennessee to go to technical college and community college free of charge forever. And we were able to create a vision for the state called the Drive to 55, taking our [00:08:00] post-secondary attainment from 32% to 55% by the year 2035.
So back to that resistance about going to work in government. So here's two things I learned, and this was a year that changed my life. The two things I learned was one, that I was right, that it is very slow and it's bureaucratic. But the second thing I learned is that if you can make a change, it can be transformative, it can be impactful, it can be bigger and better than anything you could possibly do as a business person or a philanthropist.
So it was worth it.
Carli: I really like how you said that you're an entrepreneur in each of the spheres in which you have worked. So you were in the private sector and now we're talking about how you were in the public sector and what entrepreneurial skills, 'cause I think this is important for people that listen to this.
What did you learn as an entrepreneur, or what entrepreneurial skills were transferable for you? Was it the dreaming big? Was it the not being afraid of an obstacle that stands in your path? What was it that you think. Kept that spark alive in you, that you kept from dying so that you could call yourself a public servant that is an entrepreneur?
Randy: That's a great [00:09:00] question I haven't really thought about before on that first point about the entrepreneurial spirit. I think, as you say, as you phrase it, I think being an entrepreneur is a behavior, not a job. Uh, you could be a entrepreneur in whatever job that you have, uh, whether it's public service or.
Philanthropy or, or in business. I mean, you can be in business and not be an entrepreneur. So again, I think entrepreneurial is a beha be being a behavior. And I think the key characteristics of being a successful entrepreneur, number one, is listening. I've found that to be true in public service now at the higher, at the University of Tennessee.
In in in business, a good entrepreneur. Finds a need and then addresses it. And the best way to find a need and address it is by listening to your cu, your stakeholders, whoever they may be. In this case, in my current job, it's the students and the gu and the, the state legislature and the people of Tennessee and the alumni.
You know, as a, a philanthropists, it's the, the stakeholders that you're trying to serve and business is your customers you're trying to sell products to. So just a, a little anecdote. If I were to brag, I would say that I [00:10:00] have 19 patents. Uh, so I'm proud of that. But the truth is, 18 of the 19 patents were total abject failures.
Uh, the one that was, uh, good was a really good one, but what I learned through that was every time I have a really brilliant idea of my own, take it to my engineers, they design it, and then I announce it to the world. It almost inevitably fails every time I listen to my customers really closely and give them exactly what they ask for, turns out to be successful.
Spencer: I really appreciate. That answer because a lot of people that want to be entrepreneurs someday, oftentimes think that they do have to be an inventor. To be a successful entrepreneur. And in your case, I think you much more cleanly fit into that category of an inventor and coming up with a concept that the world really hadn't seen in the way that you thought about it, but.
I like to highlight that not every part of your [00:11:00] success has had to be an invention from an entrepreneurial perspective. Would you say that's accurate?
Randy: I think a lot of times the word invention, um, is, is misunderstood. You're not usually inventing something from, scratch something that nobody's ever heard of or thought of before.
It starts with building on a demand that's already there. My, my first company, my first product was a total abject failure, uh, because I tried to create something that there was no demand for. Yeah, it had some good use. It was, it could have saved lives, but nobody would buy it because there was no demand.
So since then, we found, uh, it's much better to innovate on maybe other products that are out in the market and maybe do something novel. With regards to the, the Invisible Fence. So the Invisible Fence product was out. What I did that was different than all the other companies that also tried to, uh, compete against Invisible Fence, all of them decided to sell through franchise dealerships.
'cause that's how Invisible Fence did it. I was the first one to sell it directly to retail stores and [00:12:00] make it a do it yourself kit. So sometimes invention is not about inventing a new product, but fitting a new way to market.
Carli: You know what I hear throughout your whole story that I think is great is this lack of fear to fail.
You are saying you have 18 patents that didn't work and one that took off. Right. And I think especially today when, and we can talk about this when we talk about your students, there is this fear with social media and how public everything. To fail in the public sphere. And I think the reason you're so successful is that it's looks to me, at least on the outside, that was never your chief concern.
Your chief concern was to get it done and do something with excellence, not to worry about what everyone thought about it.
Randy: Yeah. So I stole something from Jim Collins that wrote Good to Great and Built the last in which he, one of his chapters is about try a lot of stuff and keep what works. The definition of that means you're gonna fail sometimes.
Mm-hmm. And. My company, we had a set of values and one of the, one of the values, one of the seven was try a lot of stuff and keep what works. Um, I think back to being an entrepreneur, I think you're right that, um, [00:13:00] being willing to fail is a, is a key attribute. You gotta be willing to try new things, but the key is there.
You don't have to bet the farm every time. Test if you fail or iterate and try again, and. Back to trying to create an entrepreneurial culture. We've tried to do that here at the University of Tennessee as well. Uh, one of our values is about being nimble and innovative. In that value, we describe it as, uh, be willing to try new things and keep what works.
So, um, you've gotta be able to encourage people to take chances and also you gotta be able to create a culture in which, uh, supports people if they don't, if it doesn't work out. Can I add something else? Of course. So I do, um, a commencement address for the last couple of years. Decide may do something different this year.
I've got a couple coming up in a few months, but. For the last two years, my principal message to the students and I tell them, I'm gonna tell something to you. I'm gonna share something with you that I think I may be the only commencement address, uh, speaker in the country that's sharing this with students this year.
And [00:14:00] that is I want you to go forth. And fail. Not something that they hear very often at commencement addresses, but the reason why I tell them that three things first you learn so much more from your mistakes than you do from your successes. So you, it's good to fail because you learn so much from them.
Second you're, young. If you learn now, you're gonna be able to use that lesson for the rest of your life. And third, you probably have not, you don't have a whole lot anyway, so you're not, you don't have that much to lose, but it's really good to go forth and fail early and learn from that mistake.
Carli: Yeah. We've learned it personally. It's way easier to make a lot of mistakes when you have no dollars.
Randy: Yes.
Carli: So that is the time to do it. Yeah.
Spencer: And Randy, I don't want this topic transition to be wounding, but it is the very next. Narrative in your story, which is you ran for governor in 2018 and weren't successful in the Governor run.
But in many ways I think you'd probably challenge that and say [00:15:00] maybe I wasn't successful in winning it, but you certainly. Had to have learned a lot from that. And from where you sit right now, it'd be hard to argue that you didn't get the better chair out of this.
Randy: Well, I, I feel like I did get a great chair of being the president of the University of Tennessee.
It turns out, if you want to impact the lives of Tennesseeans, there's no better place than at the University of Tennessee. But, you know, back to running for governor, and you're right, I don't have any regrets. Regrets really not very healthy anyway. But, when I decided to run, it was about continuing Governor Haslam's mission of the drive to 55 of our quest to help support rural communities.
And I remember when I first started running, I would actually say, I don't really want the job. I just wanna complete these missions. Until after about two months of that, my campaign manager told me, you have to stop saying that. You have to tell people you want the job. Nobody's gonna elect a martyr. But the truth was, it was about.
Accomplish the mission. I knew I was gonna lose about two weeks prior to the election. Not everybody did, but we, I had internal polling that told me I was going to lose, and that was probably the hardest part, campaigning when, you [00:16:00] know, you've flossed. But the day af so I was already prepared.
And the day after, um, I remember we were bringing my team together. Say, okay, here was our mission, was just figure out another way to do it. And so I was on, uh, the day after immediately trying to figure out another way to accomplish the mission, not. Imagining I could be president of the University of Tennessee.
Um, unfortunately they kind of just really wanted the jobs. So they, they, they weren't as excited as I was, but it was always about, uh, achieving the mission. I will say this, that if one were to trying to prepare to be the president of a land grant university that's here to serve the people of Tennessee, you need to run for statewide office, uh, to prepare yourself.
'cause running for statewide office. I was in every county at least four times. Some counties like Shelby County, 52 times, uh, we counted. Wow. Uh, so you're in every corner of the state warning the people of the state. And if you're gonna be leading a university whose mission is to serve the people of Tennessee how do you do that if you don't know who they are?
So I couldn't have imagined something I could have done that could have prepared me [00:17:00] better for the job I have today.
Carli: I have to ask a leadership question because you had to pivot out of what other people called loss, and now we can call it something else, which was your pivot point to your next great adventure.
But when you're in charge of the team, we always say you kind of forfeit your right to throw a tantrum. You kind of forfeit your right to fall apart in front of everyone. That's what leadership is. It's standing up, putting your shoulders back and moving on to the next thing. Is there anything you can share that helped you navigate that?
Pivot that was so public for your team. I know some of them wanted to go do other jobs, but what really got you through those two weeks to stand in front of them? Well,
Randy: yeah, so, so for me, well, getting through the two weeks is a different thing, but immediately afterwards, the, when you do your, you've lost it again.
It was about the mission and it was always about trying to accomplish. Running for governor was a method to getting certain things done. Being governor was a method to getting certain things done. It was always about. Trying to make a difference. And that was a way to make a difference in key areas that I wanted to try to make a difference [00:18:00] in.
And, uh, I just found other ways to do that.
Carli: Grounding in higher purpose makes sense to me.
Spencer: Hmm.
Randy: Can I also share that I've cheated a little bit in life by having a father who set a great example for me? Mm-hmm. Uh, I always remember when I worked for my dad those four years, we had some tough times. Uh, and the company was going through a lot of challenges.
But no matter what would happen if something didn't work out we'd come back in the next morning and my dad would say, oh, you know, I didn't like that plan anyway. I've got another plan and this is gonna be far better. He never, uh, would accept failure. He would just iterate and come up with a new plan.
Carli: That's really cool. So Randy bringing it more to present day here. How did it come about that the opportunity to be president of the University of Tennessee came to your doorstep? Because I have to imagine in the aftermath of the, nearly two years that you spent travel in the state, just the [00:19:00] humanity of a moment of what's next.
Spencer: I mean, you've sold your business in 2020 and poured your heart and soul into this. How did it come about that. You had the opportunity to sit here today?
Randy: Well, first off, from a timing point of view, I sold the company in 2020. I lost election in 2018. So there was a moment of panic at the company in which the, uh, the, the CEO was worried that I was actually coming back into the company.
Okay. So he was really relieved when it found out that I got a different job. But, um, a funny story. So as. CEO of my company as commissioner of ECD running for governor. I was always really, really busy. And, uh, you know, every now and then a friend would call up and say, Hey, can we get together for lunch?
And I would very, uh, disingenuously say, oh, that'd be great. I'll, I'll look forward to seeing you soon. I'll ask Canada schedule something, knowing it's gonna be. Two, maybe three months before I could see him. 'cause I got stuff. I'm busy. Yeah. Well, after the election, Joe Dip Pietro, the, uh, the president of the University of Tennessee at the time calls me up like two days after he was a friend.
He actually donated [00:20:00] to the campaign and says, Hey, do we wanna get together for lunch? And I said, sure. Knowing that it's gonna be months. And, uh, my assistant, uh. Calls back and says, you can see him tomorrow. You got no stuff. Nobody wants to see you. So I saw him like within a week after the election, we had lunch.
And at the end of lunch he says, by the way, I'm gonna retire. I'm gonna announce my retirement in about four weeks. And I've been talking with the chair and with the governor. We thought you'd be a great interim. Would you be willing to take that on?
Spencer: Wow.
Randy: Called up the governor and said, and the chairman, uh, which is John Compton, said, look, I'll, I'll do this, but I wanna do it like I did as the special advisor on higher education in 2013.
If you'll allow me to come in and be disruptive. Make big changes, I'll take it on for the next six months. To the listeners out there, I'll also add this, it's amazing the, the number of jobs that you can get when you're willing to work for free may not be the best career advice for the people that are trying to make money.
But, uh, but, uh, I've got, I managed to end up with a lot of really exciting roles, uh, uh, getting paid what I'm worth, which is [00:21:00] always zero. That's funny. That should haven't been paid in, I think what's today now. So it's about 13 years.
Spencer: That should be part of your commencement, go forth, fail and work for free.
Randy: There has to be a period in between. We do have to accumulate a little wealth before you can work for free. Yeah.
Spencer: Uh, okay. So let's talk about your time at the University of Tennessee. I think people when. They think, okay, what does a president of a university actually do? It actually might be hard for your.
An average individual to come up with? Well, I don't actually know what the president of a university does, so if you have to take a step back and say, what is it that you do here?
Randy: You know, I'm gonna be really general 'cause I, I would like to share what any leader would do in any organization. What I'm doing here is the same as what I was doing as commissioner of ECD and, uh, as the CEO of my company.
First off, set a mission. Something that's inspiring that gets people [00:22:00] excited. And our mission here is to make this the greatest decade in the history of the University of Tennessee. We all, throughout the entire organization, all 14,000 employees wake up every day thinking we. What big things are we gonna do next to make this the greatest decade?
And we've been around for 230 years, so making it the greatest decade is very aspirational, but we are determined to do that. So have a mission that gets people excited. The second thing is to have a strategy. We're actually working on a new strategic plan now. But you need to have a plan and you need to follow your plan, execute it, make sure that everybody understands the plan.
Communicating that plan, having clear metrics so everybody knows. How to get to where we want to go. The third is hiring great people, and that's a whole, whole speech on that. I'll save the speech. I'll just say it's hard to do. I put a lot of time and effort into making sure I'm surrounding myself and at our campuses with really, really great leaders.
And finally, creating a set of values and then living by them. Our values are the B one UT values. It's an acronym. I also believe that great values. Always are [00:23:00] an acronym so people can remember them. And there's seven, uh, there's a magic to seven by creating a set of values and then making sure that we live them every day.
So having a mission, getting a plan to get there, surrounding itself with great people, have a set of values. That's what I do.
Carli: What percentage of conversations do people start with you about talking about football?
Randy: Less than you might think. It depends on what audience I'm in, but if I am, if I'm in the just general public.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I can't have a town hall meeting without somebody wanna talk about athletics at least. But football in general.
Carli: I was gonna say, you do all of these things and I feel like you probably, most people wanna be like, sir, but what about the football team?
Randy: So for your audience, so they won't, it.
This is a nice compliment. They can gimme this compliment if they want, but it's, it's a little flawed, and that is, things are so great at the University of Tennessee. We've got such great alignment from you as the president to Don d Plowman as the Chancellor to Danny White, as the athletic director.
I said, well, that's nice. Thank you. However. We [00:24:00] have five campuses. Dante's only in charge of one, and even within Dante's campus, there were other people like the Dean of the College of Business and others that also are doing a really great job. So great alignment isn't about just the president down to, not UT Knoxville's athletic department.
It's about alignment across the state. All campuses, all departments, all colleges. Can I mention too, we also have the Oak Ridge National Labs, which I believe that our relationship with Oak Ridge National Labs has never been closer. We're working hand in glove with them on so many really important initiatives that will impact, uh, science and national security for.
Generations.
Spencer: Well, let's go there. I'd, I'd love to hear about that. That's
Carli: like of secrets. I wanna hear your secrets. Tell me everything about the
Spencer: lab. All of our listeners have now signed an NDA one will pop up on your radio dial right now, but no. Tell us some of the stuff that you're doing, uh, there.
Randy: Yeah, so Oak Ridge National Labs, uh, has been managed by Patel and the University of Tennessee for 25 years.
I'm proud to say this year we were able to get another five year contract. Certainly wouldn't wanna lose the, the, uh, [00:25:00] contract under my watch. Uh, but. We work together on so many areas that Oak Ridge National Labs, as most people know, has the world's fastest supercomputer, which is available to researchers across the country, but convenient also to, uh, students and graduate students and professors at the University of Tennessee.
Uh, we're working on five new major platforms around national security. One around radio radiopharmaceuticals, around creating advanced materials. So many different ways in which, the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Labs can work together to, to advance areas that are critically important to our nation.
Spencer: Randy, you kind of come into president of a university when a persistent national theme has been that getting a college degree is a little overrated. It's no longer necessary anymore. There's a consistent theme that. Coming through college just gets you a huge pile of debt that you are then going to slave away [00:26:00] under for a lot of years.
So I'm really interested I am confident you may be a bias source in it, but maybe not entirely because you're also a first generation college graduate yourself. And so walk me through some of your headspace when you hear that national narrative.
Randy: Well, it's frustrating. I am biased, but I'm biased because I have the facts.
Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of myths out there. I have old speech around the five myths. Don't have time for that, but I'll just say this, more students are going to college than ever poor before. In the state of Tennessee, every year we're experiencing a 2% increase a year. So the fact that. Uh, or the, the myth that nobody's gonna college anymore is not true at the University of Tennessee.
In the last five years, enrollment's grown by over 20%. Our students graduate with very little debt. 47% of all of our students graduated last year with zero debt of those Wow. Did have debt. The, uh, average debt was 26,000, which is. 5% less than it was just five years ago. We have something called the UT Promise that kind of star, uh, borrowed from the Tennessee [00:27:00] Promise idea.
Um, if you have a family income of under 75,000, you can go free of tuition and fees, uh, which means that two thirds of all tennesseeans can go free of tuition and fees. And I just got through completing a, a tour of over 6,500. High school students, 15 high schools where we talk about the value of going to, going to college.
Here's a couple of stats I would share with them. Over the last 10 years, there's 90,000 fewer jobs that require just a high school degree, 43,000 that need at least a technical or community college degree and 361,000 that need a four year degree or more. So that's where the jobs are. Average income for somebody with a four year degree.
Over somebody that just has a high school degree is $1.5 million more. Uh, so it makes sense to go over their lifetime. Wow. Thank you.
Spencer: That's incredible. That
Randy: was the, the most concise I've usually it takes 10 minutes. I think. Did, that was impressive. I think I did it in two minutes.
That was impressive. I'm impressed with myself actually. Well done.
Spencer: Well done. I wanna pull a couple parts out of that. So let's start on the debt piece. 'cause I think there's no more relevant issue on a [00:28:00] national scale. And so to repeat, the stat that I think that I heard is that you said 47% of students will graduate the University of Tennessee with zero debt.
Randy: Yes, that was last year. Wow. And it's increasing that more and more students are graduating with zero debt, multiple reasons for that. Over the last five years, inflation has been, it keeps changing, but I guess on average it was been about 5%. At the University of Tennessee, across the system, um, our increases in tuition has been equaling 0.8%.
So we're increasing at a much lower rate. Inflation. So we're, which basically implies we're relatively less and less expensive for the average, uh, family to be able to go. Again, we have lots of scholarships like the UT Promise, two thirds of all Tennessee can go free of tuition and fees, along with lots of other financial aid that we have.
I should point out, shout out to those that, to the people the state legislature and the governors over the last three generations or terms that we've had, that we have, uh, the. The highest per capita, um, [00:29:00] scholarships and, uh, and incentives for students of any other state in the country. So if you're wanting to go to college, uh, this is the most inexpensive place to go because of the great support that we get from our state.
Spencer: Randy, Carly and I were sitting with Senator Marsha Blackburn last week and I was telling her that we were gonna have you on the podcast in a week. And I said, all right, Marsha, you get one question. What's the question that you to ask? And I'm not gonna try to do her voice 'cause it'd be really bad. So, but she said, I want to know about the AI and what the University of Tennessee is doing out there in the research for artificial intelligence and all the advancements.
That's her question. And so I'm here as, uh, representative for the moment of, uh, of her talk to us about what's going on, because there's some amazing things happening here in the University of Tennessee with ai.
Randy: Yeah, that's a broad question. I, I'll say maybe break it into three parts. One, there's research around AI making sure that the University of Tennessee.
Is leading in the development of [00:30:00] ai. We're working a lot with Oak Ridge National Labs in that space to make sure that, uh, we're not just looking at the capabilities, but the energy efficiency. I think one of the biggest challenges in AI is just how much energy it consumes. Mm-hmm. And we, along with the lab, have, uh.
Lots of expertise in that area. So that's one area that we're, we're working on. The second is just actually using AI ourself to help, uh, be more efficient in our operations. From, uh, um, admissions we get at, at UT Knoxville last year, we have 67,000 applications and how could we sort that better and more efficiently?
Uh, but throughout our organization, there's lots of ways in which we could just incorporate AI to be more efficient. And our administrative tasks so that we have more money to invest in our students. And then finally, making sure that we're educating people on ai. Um, and it's not just creating and there are some degrees that are developing that are.
Solely focused on ai. But the trick is, I think more importantly, embedding AI in everything we teach. So whether you're in logistics or in [00:31:00] architecture or in uh, engineering, there's, there should be an a, uh, the ability to understand AI in whatever you do. And then also we're offering ai courses to companies.
For example, Denzo has now got a program for their leadership team or their employees, not just leadership, their team. To come to UT and take, uh, a program on AI so they can better use ai. I heard a friend of mine, oh she's the CEO of Stowers Machinery here in Knoxville, that it's a big equipment company and she gave a speech a few months ago where, in which she said that she was talking to her mechanics, uh, she's got like a hundred mechanics and told them your jobs aren't gonna be replaced by ai, but they're gonna be replaced by mechanics that know how to use ai.
Yeah.
Carli: That's a great distinction.
Randy: Yeah.
Carli: Because there's a lot of fear around it right now, so I think that helps bring clarity to, you know, we have kids that are a little bit younger than college age, but making sure they're prepared for their future and it's changing so quickly that it can create a lot of [00:32:00] fear for families.
Randy: Yeah.
Spencer: From an academic perspective. I have to also think that AI is causing challenges from a student and education perspective. Yeah. Because on one hand you want your students to be engaged with ai. You want them to be able to understand how to manipulate it. And like you said, if you are a tradesman, a tradeswoman and doing an activity, a computer is not going to replace you.
But. Knowing how to be better at what you wanna do and more efficient, you've gotta be able to use ai. But on the other hand, when you're in an academic setting, there's a lot of temptation to say, alright, grok chat, GPT, write this paper for me. Mm-hmm. And go through that. Are you having to navigate some of those complexities as a president of a university with not a ton of precedent for how to adjudicate where [00:33:00] that line is?
Randy: Oh, so I was tracking with you into that last statement. I don't, don't necessarily agree with the, uh, doing something that's, that's new. 'cause this is something that changing with, uh, new, uh, technology, something that mankind's been, uh, dealing with for, you may not have admit it that way, but for. The millennium, but, uh.
Practically today, I trust the faculty and the provost to figure out what the guidelines are in their classroom and in their departments. And it depends on, on the, what it is they're trying to learn and how they're, how they want to learn it. But I just read recently, I think it was Plato that, uh, had a real issue with, uh, when the, their students beginning to write things down, but now people are writing things down now they don't have to memorize.
So this is, this is gonna ruin people's ability to learn, the ability to write things down. I think back in. When I was in high school and somebody came up with a Texas instrument calculator and that was gonna ruin society 'cause nobody will be able to do math anymore. I'm pretty sure there are people that were saying the same things about Google when Google came out.
Now students can actually just google the answer [00:34:00] in their classroom that's gonna run education. I think it's similar, you know, it's just another tool and we'll find a way to make sure that we use it, hopefully in the best way to continue to get great outcomes and learning.
Spencer: I think one other really important part about the University of Tennessee, from those that are not from the state and are trying to better understand, never been on campus, the amount of agricultural impact that the University of Tennessee has is disproportionately large.
When you compare it to other universities across the country, can you explain why that is the case here for the University of Tennessee? Why it's a priority?
Randy: Well thank, thanks for bringing that up. Um, so in our constitution, uh, for the University of Tennessee, we are required to have the commissioner of agriculture.
On our board of all the different industries, hospitality, tourism, automobile, all these other major industries, the only one that's required is agriculture. We've always been, as a part of our mission committed to agriculture and [00:35:00] agriculture's still the number one industry in our state.
There's a lot of other industries like automotive and tourism that are growing, but agriculture is still the number one, industry in our state. And so as the Public Land Grant University here to serve the people of Tennessee. You know, it would be, it would be remiss if we weren't focusing on agriculture and mm-hmm.
We've got a great agricul, uh, college of Agriculture at UT Oxville. Also another great College of Agriculture at UT Martin. In addition, we have something called the Institute of Agriculture that has 10 research centers all across the state. Over 40,000 acres of research, uh, land available to us. Also, we have an extension office in every single one of the nine, five counties providing all kinds of service to people in agriculture.
Spencer: Maybe the last thing that I'd like to ask you in your role is sometimes I think people look at a university the size of Tennessee and say, resources seem almost unlimited. The. Capacity seems almost unlimited in comparison to a [00:36:00] lot of other institutions and what you could accomplish. And so trying to prioritize what you want to focus on has to be really, really tough.
And so let's loop it back to the beginning of how you explained your time and your responsibility as president of the University of Tennessee is to cast a vision. And you've done a lot. In a short period of time, which now that we know your backstory is, is kind of unsurprising, right? We can see that all throughout, cast that vision for us for the next handful of years.
Maybe resources set aside. What's that magic wand moment where you say. When I know that I've accomplished this, I know that I have done what I came here to do.
Randy: We wanna continue to grow to serve the people of Tennessee to provide more access and more opportunity to more students. So there are multiple areas of, of focus on academic excellence, on research, on [00:37:00] economic impact, on, uh, reaching out and supporting industry and agriculture.
If you had to do one thing, we wouldn't really have a reason to exist if it wasn't for our students. It's so, it starts with students and we're intent on growing. We've gone from 54,000 students to 65,000 students in the last five years, say 20% increase. Our goal is to get to 71,000 by the year 2030. You wouldn't be surprised, but we have metrics and uh, the metrics around, uh, enrollment is to get to 71,000.
And by the way, we will blow that away. Wow. So we, uh, are looking to probably update that in the next year or so. But one might ask like, why do you want to grow? Uh, is this for ego or moving up rankings? We don't care at all about rankings. I'm already on, on, on the record publicly saying I don't really.
Give a flip about US News World Report. All we wanna do is serve more Tennesseans and growing enrollment serves the state of Tennessee in two ways. One, I've got. Families, their parents and the students that are desperate to come to the University of Tennessee, they want to get [00:38:00] that great quality education at any one of our, our campuses.
Yeah. And so I wanna make sure that we can provide as much opportunity as possible for as many students as possible. At the exact same time, we have employers all across the state that are desperate for talent. Yeah. And we're the best talent provider, so we're growing to meet the employer's needs and the student's needs, and that's our focus.
Carli: I would like to ask one question around that because I've always wondered how do you pick what people get to study? So I hear you talking about employers and you're working really closely, but could you kind of unveil a little bit how do you decide what majors are gonna be available and how much class time to allot to all of these different opportunities?
And it sounds like you have to be really nimble, right? To pivot to all the new technology. So. How do you, is there an algorithm? Does AI help you? Like how are you making those decisions? No, in this case it's back to listening to your customer. Your customers is the students and, and we try to meet the demand that the students have.
Randy: Now, we don't wanna offer courses that they have no chance of getting a job in. Sure. But, uh, we want to provide the. The whole menu of [00:39:00] options to them, and then they get to make the decision. So we don't make the decision for them. They make, they decide what they want. However, we do spend a lot of time with counseling, especially early on, to make sure they are making wise decisions.
There's some one train of thought that we should measure universities by the return on investment that the students get from the, from the jobs that they choose, and that's. Interesting. And it's, it's a guide, but it's also flawed. 'cause there's a lot of really important. Careers that students could choose that don't pay a lot of money.
People in social work or you know, mental health, um, counseling or even being an elementary school teacher, you know, by the economics it may not necessarily have the biggest rate of return mm-hmm. But we, our society needs them. So, we wanna make sure that ma at least, that the students are looking at all those factors and making the best decision, but they, in the end, make the decision.
Spencer: Randy, the way that we end each podcast is I have a couple short phrases with a blank at the end. Okay. You can fill it in with a word or [00:40:00] a short phrase that you think completes the thought. Uh, but if you'll just repeat the short prompt to me and then fill it in. Okay. That'd be great. You ready?
Randy: Okay. Let's try it.
Spencer: All right. Here's number one. When I think about Tennessee's future, I believe ut must blank.
Randy: When I think about Tennessee's future, I think ut needs to help shape it.
Spencer: Number two, the lesson I carried from entrepreneurship into higher ed is
Randy: the lesson I carried from entrepreneurship into higher ed is the necessity to continue to innovate.
Spencer: And number three, the biggest opportunity for UT over the next decade is.
Randy: The biggest opportunity for UT over the next decade is to continue to make education more accessible and affordable to more people.
Spencer: I really like that we end on that comment, Randy, because Carly and I recently sat down with Stuart McCarter, the current economic Commissioner of Development and Governor Lee, and asked them about.
The kind of pros and cons of the state of Tennessee, and by any metric, [00:41:00] Tennessee is booming economically. People are moving here in droves. It's one of the top three states to start a business in. It's so friendly. No state income tax, like so many good things that are going, but. What Stuart McCarter in particular said, who's trying to, don't have to tell you what Stuart McCarter's job is, but for our listeners, uh, he's trying to attract businesses coming to Tennessee.
He said the main thing that he struggles with is having the right number of qualified individuals that can serve and labor and work in the businesses that wanna move here and. As logistics background people for Carly and I we spend a lot of time examining bottlenecks. We gotta eliminate the bottlenecks, and I so appreciate that.
Your priority is to expand, to access and also to train [00:42:00] at a level that. I mean, we're seeing nearly 50% more Tennesseans get college degrees now than what they were just a decade or two ago. And the University of Tennessee is a chief bottleneck, eliminator in solving those problems for the state. And so for your time as president, I'm really, really thankful to see how intentional you are about it and also how your whole life has kind of prepared you to be right here in this moment.
I mean, it, it really focuses via a lens of what has been your passion. And a through line that has come through your entire career, uh, all the way to, you know, you being a little kid and working with your dad and it all serves you today. And so I just wanna say thank you on behalf of Tennesseans in general.
For spending your time here, uh, you're working for free man, and that, uh, is also, uh, something that everybody can appreciate. [00:43:00] You've got a lot of places that would be thrilled to have you but it's fantastic that we have you here in Tennessee. So thank you for being on Signature Required today.
Randy: Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
