If Hormel Foods was trying to use some magician's sleight-of-hand in announcing its tuition program for employees' kids at the same time as the company's third quarter financial results — "Hey, look over here, not over there!" — the headlines yesterday would indicate they hit the bull's-eye.

Not that Hormel's quarterly earnings weren't worth paying attention to. The company overall saw a 2% increase in net income in the quarter, to $203 million, on record net sales of $2.4 billion. Those are solid numbers in a topsy-turvy economy. But that tuition program, dubbed Inspired Pathways, is a crown jewel of an attention-grabber.

What struck me about the program is its no-strings-attached generosity. As a parent of a college-age kid, I know any scholarship, grant or stipend is welcome. It makes sense from a business perspective to think of those as investments in the company's future, and offer, say, scholarships to study poultry science if you're a poultry processor, or underwrite a vocational education with an eye on training future machine operators for the plant. Programs like these are a terrific boost to the students and families that take advantage of them.

Hormel's offer, on the other hand, takes aim at a larger social issue: That higher education costs have gone through the roof at the same time that our economy has morphed into a high tech-driven machine that requires some type of advanced training for just about every job available. The reasons behind the disconnect are complex, but the result is a dangerously widening gap between the have and the have-nots and fewer bridges across that gap. Hormel is building one of those bridges.

The program also is a much-needed shot in the arm for community colleges which, while not getting the same kind of attention as four-year, on-campus schools, also are struggling to provide online learning and maintain a sense of community in a time of pandemic. And, the Inspired Pathways students could study English literature, nursing, graphic design, African-American studies — whatever their interests may be. They'll be set up to potentially earn more, be more steadily employed and be in a better position to support their families and their communities, even if they aren't working for Hormel and don't live in one of the U.S. communities where the company has operations.

Generous, free-tuition, so-called "promise" programs have been making a splash for years. In 2018, New York University announced its medical school was going tuition-free, a huge benefit to the students who can a) get into the program and b) afford the housing and other fees that still add up to nearly $30,000 a year. Last year, businessman Ben Cutler offered most of the graduates of his hometown high school, in Neodesha, Kan., free tuition at any school up to the value of the state's most expensive state-supported university, a program designed to be in place for the next 25 years. A similar program is El Dorado, Ark., has already paid for more than 2,600 El Doradans to attend college.

But the potential scope of Hormel's program is breathtaking. Let's say, out of 17,600 Hormel employees in the U.S., half of them have offspring in elementary or secondary schools who could benefit from the company's program. Family size will vary, but let's say on average each family has two such students — bringing us back to 17,600 kids eligible to participate in the next 10-12 years, or between about 1,500 and 1,750 each year.

If even a third of those students opt for the Inspired Pathways benefit — because unlike other "promise" programs, Hormel has not established a GPA or standardized test score cutoff — that's still 500 to 600 students a year. By contrast, Neodesha High School's graduating classes have hovered around 80 students a year.

According to the American Association of Community Colleges, the average yearly cost of tuition and fees for community college students in the U.S. is about $3,500. Financially, then, Hormel is committing to investing somewhere around $1.7 million and $2.1 million a year with no calculable ROI — although the financial return on employee recruitment and retention will surely benefit.

No doubt, $2 million is a rounding error at a $9 billion multinational corporation. Heck, CEO James Snee's compensation is north of $8 million a year. But creating a pathway for hundreds of kids in small towns every year to begin to pursue wider horizons is what's called having an impact.

And what a splash it would make if the meat industry's other huge corporations were to follow suit: Tyson, with 122,000 U.S. employees and $40 billion in revenues; JBS USA, with 78,000 employees and $22 billion in revenues; and Cargill, Smithfield, Perdue and others — the potential beneficiaries easily number in the hundreds of thousands.

Meat industry employees are exactly the demographic that benefit from an Inspired Pathways program. It's not the offspring of the tech moguls who so often lead the business news who need the break; it's the children of the folks who actually make things. They are the meat industry's responsibility, and this is the meat industry's opportunity.

And with the means to make that kind of a difference — well, what c-suite exec doesn't see the ROI in that investment?

Now, THAT's a mic drop

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