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Earplugs dampened the slaughterhouse racket. Sinking a meat hook into the suspended carcasses that hurtled by, he used a long knife to split sides of beef between their fourth and fifth ribs. A hard hat and steel-mesh apron protected him from errant machete blows.

“Those carcasses are swinging by you every three to five seconds,” Adam says, recalling his first days on the chain line in 1999. “You’ve got to be very quick.”

Besides being quick, Adam was lucky.

Hispanic males are the only student ethnic/gender group whose post-secondary attainment rate declined from 1990 to 2000, according to the U.S. Census. Many of those men and boys hold manufacturing jobs, but only about 15 percent of factories offer English or math instruction to their workers.

The Ft. Morgan plant is an exception. Cargill Meat Solutions, the largest employer in northeastern Colorado, offers an array of educational opportunities to its 2,000 mostly Hispanic workers. As a result, Adam wandered onto a path that would take him from abattoir to academe to commencement, this month, at the University of Northern Colorado.

Lumina Foundation is eager to determine whether Adam’s experience can be replicated on a large scale. With so many poorly educated Hispanic males employed in the manufacturing sector, factories could be a natural point of educational access for them. The foundation is sponsoring research to determine whether educational programs in the work place, particularly manufacturing settings, have the potential to become effective college feeder systems for Hispanic male immigrants.

“If it works at a meat-packing house, then what about other places?” asks Mary Crabbe Gershwin, a consultant for the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce, which received a Lumina grant to study the issue.

Breaking the cycle

Statistically, Adam was destined for poverty. While in the third grade in Rocky Ford, Colorado, he began helping his parents pick tomatoes, onions, watermelons and cantaloupes after school. In the off-season, the family went on public assistance.

“I guess you could call it migrant work,” he says. “Throughout my life we’ve been very poor.”

In 1996, on the advice of an aunt, the family moved to Fort Morgan to take jobs at the meat-packing plant. It was a step up for Adam’s parents. His mother, who gave birth when she was 16, had dropped out of the 11th grade. His father didn’t make it past elementary school before coming to the United States from Mexico.

Adam followed in their footsteps. When he left high school to take his place in the plant, he already had a three-year-old daughter. Finding himself on the chain line, his respect for his parents deepened.  

“The work is hard,” he recalls. “My body and hands were aching all the time.”

New ambitions, new self-image

Eager for relief, he investigated rumors that the plant offered a GED program in partnership with Morgan Community College. He signed up and earned an equivalency degree. The director of the workplace education program, Shirley Penn, encouraged Adam to continue his education at the community college.

“I didn’t think I could go to college. I didn’t think I was smart enough,” he says. “I honestly thought that college was for rich people.”

That attitude is prevalent, says Michelle Haney, president of Morgan Community College. Many of her students “come from a culture in which education has not been of value or is not seen as something that you can achieve. ... These people value family and being able to support your family.”

Despite his misgivings, Adam was admitted to Morgan. Two years later he earned an associates' degree. He assumed that he had fulfilled his educational destiny, but Shirley Penn encouraged him to enroll in a four-year institution.

“Once again, I didn’t think I could get accepted because of who I was,” Adam says, “but I did.”

Today he is the first member of a large extended family to earn a four-year degree. He now has three daughters of his own. His educational achievement means that his girls have a better statistical chance than daughters of uneducated parents to avoid relapse into the familial cycle of poverty.

“I broke the chain,” says Adam, who intends to become a school teacher and eventually get a master’s degree.

“My ultimate goal is to be a college professor,” he says. “I want to encourage Mexican-Americans to finish high school and go to college.”

John Pulley is a former senior editor and senior reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Can work and study go together?

Lumina has granted $154,200 to the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW) to examine whether employer-sponsored education programs can increase college access and attainment for Hispanic male immigrants. CSW will partner with the National Association of Manufacturing’s Center for Workforce Success and the American Association of Community College’s National Council for Workforce Education.

Background

Hispanics constitute a rapidly growing segment of the population. But as their numbers grow, access to education has lagged. During the 10-year period that ended in 2000, the rate of educational attainment declined for Hispanic males, the only group to record a decrease, according to the U.S. Census.  
Among the factors that limit Hispanic males’ access to education are poverty, cultural norms, isolation within communities, poor awareness of educational opportunity, lack of English proficiency, etc. Providing educational opportunity in the workplace has the potential to overcome some or all of these impediments, the initiative’s investigators say. The hypothesis reverses much of the traditional thinking about access.

“A lot of literature will talk about working full-time as a barrier,” says Mary Crabbe Gershwin, the project’s principle investigator. “For a lot of people, full-time employment is the reality. We’re looking at models that work.”

Scope

The 18-month project will employ literature reviews, site visits to exemplary programs, and other methods to compile a comprehensive summary of employer- sponsored education that has potential for supporting educational attainment among Hispanics and other adult immigrants. A primary goal is to identify specific strategies for encouraging employers’ investment in educational opportunities for workers. The project seeks strategies involving not only employers but also employer associations, state policy-makers, educational institutions and community partners.

Researchers will discuss their findings at a leadership forum that will bring together various stakeholders. The project will also develop a two- to three-year pilot program for implementing the project’s findings on a larger scale.

“I think that, in principle, we’ve always thought that education of any kind can lead to further education,” says Sarita Brown, president of Excelencia in Education, which analyzes data to better understand the Latino college experience. “This gives us a chance to check it out.”

For more information, contact Mary Gershwin, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce, at 303.322.8190.