Rotarian Sandy Martin introduced speaker for the week, RCK Member and 26th President of the University of Tennessee System, Randy Boyd. Randy founded Radio Systems Corporation in 1991. He currently owns Boyd Sports, LLC. He was a Special Advisor on Higher Education and later the Commissioner of Economic and Community Development during Bill Haslam’s term as Governor. Randy and his wife also run the Boyd Foundation. Randy enjoys running and has completed 89 half -marathons and 52 full-marathons.
Randy gave an update on how things are going across the University of Tennessee System. He talked about this being the “Greatest Decade” of the University of Tennessee. He noted that they announced that initiative in February of 2020, jut three weeks before suspending classes indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beginning in West Tennessee, with the UT Health Science Center in Memphis – UT Health Science Center has 888 locations across the state where they have either students or faculty teaching or working. They have a new initiative to place dental clinics in rural areas around the state that provide free or low-cost dental care. UTHSC is currently not growing due to constraints around the number Graduate Education Medical Residence spots that are available.
The University of Tennessee, Martin is expected to have a 4%-6% increase in enrollment this year. Currently at 7,200 students. UTM has a new Chancellor named Yancy Freeman. His goal is to get UTM to 10,000 students by 2030.
The University of Tennessee, Southern is the UT System’s newest campus. Previously Martin Methodist University, it was acquired by the UT System in 2020 during the pandemic. This campus is in a rural area of Southcentral Tennessee with a strong need for nurses and teachers. Martin Methodist was a private institution with a high tuition that most people in the area could not afford. There was no public four-year college in a 26-county area in that part of the state. With the acquisition of this campus into the UT System, tuition has dropped from $26K to $10K per year and enrollment has grown by nearly 30%.
The University of Tennessee, Chattanooga enrollment will be up 4% this year. They currently have 11,000 students, with a goal of reaching 15,000.
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville will have a record number of freshmen coming in this year. This class will also be a record number of Tennesseans, a record average ACT Scores and a record average GPA. Combined with a 1.5% increase in retention, UTK is expected to have roughly 2,000 more students on campus this year over last year.
Randy talked about all the different reasons that people are choosing the University of Tennessee, including infrastructure, college rankings and sports, but particularly highlighted our ambassadors. We are really good at selling our university to visitors.
Next, Randy talked about myths that exist that are deterring people from pursuing higher education and the need for all of us to help dispel those myths. These myths include “No one is really going to college anymore. You can get a great job right out of high school”. Across the country, enrollment rates are down, but not in the State of Tennessee. Over the last 5 years, enrollment across the state is up 2% and within the UT System, enrollment in up 15%.
Another myth is that “all the good jobs just require a trade school certificate or associate’s degree”. Actually, over the last 10 years, there are 90k less jobs in the State of Tennessee that only require a high school diploma. During the same period, the number of jobs in the state that require a four-year degree have increased by 379k jobs. The State of Tennessee has a shortage of 10k engineers. We are also short on nurses and teachers.
The next myth was that “tuition is increasing faster than inflation”. This is simply not true. The national inflation rate over the past five years has been around 5.4% per year, while the UT System’s average tuition has grown by 0.8% per year.
The next myth was “if you go to college, you are going to end up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt”. In actuality, across the UT System, 47% of students graduate with no debt. Of those that did graduate with debt, the average was $26k.
The final myth was “only rich kids can go to UT”. That is completely not true. The UT Promise says that any student whose family makes less that $75k per year (2/3 of Tennessee families), you can go to any one of the UT campuses completely free of tuition and fees.
A question was asked about the percentages of in-state vs out-of-state students across the system. Randy indicated that this year, it will be approximately 67% in-state and 33% out-of-state. He mentioned that we are not growing enough Tennesseans to fill all the jobs, so we do have to import talent from other states in order to continue to grow our economy. The universities are our biggest magnet in attracting and retaining talent. 40% of all students that come from out-of-state end up staying in Tennessee.
A question was asked about how we are increasing the number of engineering degrees coming out of the UT System. Randy indicated that Engineering is the second-fastest growing college at UTK and the fastest growing college at UTC and UTM.
A question was asked about how quickly the University of Tennessee is growing and the influx of people into the community. Randy indicated that UT is driven by the needs of the state. Our current goal is to grow UTK from 59k to 71k students.
A question was asked about the number of International Students being accepted. Randy indicated that we want to grow our international students as we currently under-index compared to other universities.
A question was asked about how much they are focusing on recruiting from rural areas in the state. Randy indicated that as a high priority. He indicated that all 95 counties are represented in the UT System and 93 of 95 counties are represented at UTK. There is a new initiative in place that says that if you graduate in the top 10% of your class in any high school in Tennessee, you are automatically excepted to UTK.
A question was asked about the status of the pedestrian bridge planned to connect campus to South Knoxville. Randy indicated that they have received $25m from the state, which is about 1/3 of the cost. They applied for a RISE grant from the Federal Department of Transportation but were not awarded it this year. The application will be automatically resubmitted next year.