That a high school in Kentucky is tranforming a barn on campus into a meat processing plant isn’t novel in more rural areas, as I’ve learned, but it sure is a different planet altogether from high school offerings and campuses in my area (the suburbs of Chicago).

Heck, the car garage at my high school was a foreign concept for me, let alone that of a plant with teenagers cutting up animals and/or animal parts. Picturing my daughter, now a freshman, in that setting is as difficult as it is laughable.

With the benefit of age, and ironically a career covering the meat industry and visiting many plants and livestock/poultry operations, I can look back at the fact that high schools even had automotive classes and recognize how cool and important that was. I’ve grown to loath how the U.S. college system has become a swindle of the highest degree to young kids, crushing them with debt in exchange for a piece of paper they think will pay for a big ole house and ski trips.

While I won’t say my daughter is one to enjoy getting her hands dirty, and her high school is devoid a meat plant, I’m heartened to learn that one of her classes (personal finance) is teaching that there are options other than a bank-breaking four-year college degree. She’s a promising student athlete, and damn is college a fun and freeing social exercise, but I like that she likes the idea of having options. I like that it makes her think of what college will provide, and what to do with her money either way.

Her high school isn’t likely to produce the next meat industry leaders, if even its entry-level workers. But this class she’s taking is reflective of a shift that might be at least somewhat encouraging for those looking for manual labor or trade-leaning young people.

According to experts I’ve heard speak at industry conferences, the number of high school graduates in the U.S. is expected to peak in 2025 and decline from there, perhaps facilitating an increasing interest in well-paid trade work that doesn’t require a college education. Also promising, those experts note, the fastest-growing extracurricular activity in high schools and junior high schools in the last five years has been robotics, which aligns well with the industry’s increasing use of such tools.

The nature of the industry’s work, disassembling animals for meat products, won’t ever be appealing enough to be a standard part of the curriculum in every high school or college.

Meatpackers and processors are going to have to continue to vary the ways in which they recruit, train and retain people (we cover the many ways they are in our October magazine issue). But the culture is shifting to satisfy post-pandemic employees who aren’t letting go of their newfound autonomy.

Good timing, then, that at least some high schools are empowering teenagers to think outside of the frames of doctoral and law diplomas.

New school

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