SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Food enthusiasts have been enrolling in culinary school in growing numbers, lured by dreams of working as gourmet chefs or opening their own restaurants. For many graduates, however, those dreams have turned into financial nightmares, as they struggle to pay off hefty student loans and find work in a cutthroat industry known for its long hours and low pay.
Now, some former students are suing for-profit cooking schools to get their money back, saying they were misled by recruiters about the value of culinary education and their job prospects after graduation.
“They just oversold it and pushed it. They made misleading statements to lure you in,” said Emily Journey, 26, a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against San Francisco’s California Culinary Academy, part of Career Education Corp.’s chain of 16 Le Cordon Bleu cooking schools. In 2004, Journey was a recent high school graduate, dreaming of opening her own bakery, when she enrolled in a 7-month program in pastry and baking arts at the San Francisco school. Recruiters convinced her it was a worthwhile investment and helped her borrow $30,000 to pay for it.
After finishing the program, the only job she could find paid $8 an hour to work the night shift at an Oregon bakery — “something anyone could have gotten without a culinary certificate,” she said.
Journey, who now lives in Bakersfield, has abandoned her baker’s dream and now plans to attend community college to become a nurse or dietitian. Without the settlement money, she will be paying for that culinary certificate for another 15 years. “Was it worth the money and the time to have this loan hanging over my head?” she asked. “Absolutely not.”
Two other Le Cordon Bleu schools — the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena and the Western Culinary Institute in Portland — also face lawsuits from former students who say they were duped by deceptive advertising, particularly the schools’ job placement rates.
I guess the saying “you get what you pay for” doesn’t apply here.
Caveat emptor…
Shouldn’t people going into these expensive schools look to the market before diving in head first?
We have a similar ‘scam’ here in Portugal with aviation schools…. Few are falling, fortunately…
And shouldn’t Americans’ ambitions be loftier? Science? Technology? High End Computing? Aerospace? Biotech?
Cooking???? Sounds a bit like Thailand…
If she had been succesful and made millions, would she give them some as a token of thankfulness?
So she was “dreaming of opening her own bakery”, but instead of borrowing $30K, opening a bakery and living her dream, she decided to go to school and then go to work in someone else’s bakery.
Maybe instead of Chef school she should have gone to business school.
I know many people who say that, one day, they’d like to run their own business. They’re all working at crappy jobs for someone else.
It’s also amazing the number of people who wish they could win the lottery so they can start their own business. As if the key to running a business is to start with a lot of money, they gradually spend it all.
The great thing about being an entrepreneur is that the only qualification you need is ambition. If you want to start your own business, then start your own business. If you don’t know what you’re doing, they you’ll go out of business very quickly (like most entrepreneurs) then you learn from your mistake and try starting a business you know something about.
I don’t know what she is complaining about. She’s baking for a living, isn’t she? Isn’t that what she wanted?
I guess some people with other kinds of degrees are having trouble getting the big paying jobs.
Just getting a minimum wage job is the new American dream and it now takes more then just a high school diploma.
When the economy is bad, allot of scum business spring up (with help from wall street) to lock people into “helpful” and wise investment loans under one guise or another (education, home, auto, medical…).
It’s only going to get worse, with more financially disparate people grabbing onto a pretend helping hands, which generates more disrepair and further feeds and grows the market. That’s what economist call a virtuous business cycle!
Wall street wins again!
No matter how much (or, in today’s economy especially, how little) money you have, there are many, many groups of people out there plotting to do you out of it.
Not everyone can be the next Bobby Flay or Guy Fieri.
Wife thought about taking courses at Le Cordon Bleu in Las Vegas about 5 years ago (I worked close to the school at the time), but found out it cost too much and she knew more about cooking than the students.
Are the banks in the US run by monkeys to just lend someone 50K for a dodgy education?
in #9, Floyd said: …found out it cost too much and she knew more about cooking than the students…
But think, she could really handle a skillet with skill.
I’d bet she’d be eligible for SWAT training after braining some street scum while deflecting bullets with a cast iron skillet. The ricochet off of one of those is killer.
Mine’s just got a bachelor’s degree with double majors in Art History and Children’s Education.
Her speech has improved and she’s got more self confidence, but employability…
Only the future will show me if I would have save time by flushing it directly into the crapper.
This story merely indicates that people want to work a trade without really learning one.
That they want to “get a certificate” that magically qualifies them in a few months to do work that really takes probably a decade of apprenticing to learn.
But it’s not totally their fault, since the education industry has pushed “going to school” over “getting your hands dirty.”
Pretty soon we’re going to see “cash register operator” degrees.
See those overly expensive ethnic restaurants? Only the chefs you see in front and the owner are of that ethnicity. The rest are from Mexico and El Salvador.
Anecdote:
A friend of mine from way back wanted to open his own restaurant. He looked into cooking schools, determined they were too expensive, and joined the Marines with a guaranteed job as cook.
Got out after three years, applied for a loan to open a restaurant based on his three years of experience cooking for hundreds of people at a time (and managing the kitchen and supplies, etc.).
He got the loan, ran the restaurant for five years then sold it because he was tired of working 18 hours a day.
#13, It’s like that in the UK, kinda.
All those English Pubs, and Scottish and Irish Restaurants are all run by people from the former USSR countries. Seems the locals are kinda like our locals — don’t want to work for minimum wage.
Too bad she is too stupid to think this out ahead of time. How do you teach people savvy? Maybe she could be a night deposit box at a sperm bank.
ah yes for profit schools…, seems like one’s debt is guaranteed but not one’s employment , until that is the other way around one shouldnt have to pay for for an education.
if bill gates has his way, this is what all education will look like this culinary school’s
As person who has actually been in charge of hiring kitchen staff I can tell you I would never hire anyone from one of these trade schools.
First my experience is that they will let anyone pass through these schools, give them enough checks for the right amount of time and they will say you know how to cook.
Second, working in a kitchen is a horrible job. very few people in the world are cut out for it or would even want to put up with it for long. If you have not worked your way up through the ranks and proven you want to be in the industry I have no time to train you and hope that you won’t quit after a week. I can not tell you how many people never even make it through training.
OK, I gotta say it: Looks like this for profit activity engaged in Puffery! And just like the baked product, full of hot air and too much grease.
I agree people are stupid and almost – ALMOST – deserve to be taken advantage of. Does that mean we should allow predatory “for profit schools” to have their way with the public?
Does seem to me these trade schools should be required to post their job placement statistics and that these should be reviewed and monitored. Students should be required to see and sign these statistics.
Then let the people have their dreams. I enjoy watching Gordon Ramsey turn around bad restaurants. Food is involved but so is every other aspect of business==each element playing its role. Just like life.
Knowledge is power. You can read it from more than a few books, or feel the scars.
Just saw David Brooks on Book Tv re “The Social Animal.” Thats going to be the first book I have bought in years. He said something I have thought for years but have never heard until him: Every course in college should be about how to marry well. Your marriage does more than anything else to set the amount/quality of happiness/satisfaction you will have in life. I agree as far as that goes but like running a restaurant, there is more involved.
Know yourself.
We need a revolution of personal responsibility in this world.