06.14.07
California Culinary Academy: bad news
This article (via Accidental Hedonist) explains how CCA, once a good institution, transformed itself into what amounts to a scam operation after being purchased by a for-profit company. The article begins:
In the Polk Street admissions office of the California Culinary Academy, oversized posters display pictures of three of the school’s graduates. The three were named “Rising Star Chefs” by the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year, and the school is bursting with pride. The posters make effective recruiting tools — admissions representatives can point to them and tell prospective students that a CCA education is the key to gastronomic fame and glory.
Maybe CCA should have asked the three rising stars how they would feel about serving as photo advertisements for the school.
James Syhabout, who heads PlumpJack Café’s kitchen, is the most measured in his evaluation of CCA — but he graduated in 1999, before the school was purchased by a large for-profit education company. “I know the school has definitely changed since I’ve been there,” he said.
Tim Luym, who cooks at the Poleng Lounge in Nopa, said he found the school “a little deceptive.” He says no one explained that many graduates of the expensive school go on to kitchen jobs that pay $10 per hour. “They don’t really give you the reality of how much you’ll be making,” he says. “They never give you financials.”
The third chef, Chris Kronner of the Slow Club in Potrero Hill, says the school does not have the best interest of the students at heart. “For me it seemed that it was more about money — it was more a body factory, and not as much about education,” he says. Kronner also claims that students were pushed along toward graduation with little concern for whether or not they had actually learned anything. “As long as you pay your $50,000, they will give you a degree,” he says. When his class graduated in 2003, Kronner and some of his classmates discussed putting together a lawsuit to get their money back.
CCA once had a distinguished reputation for turning out passionate and creative chefs. Many of San Francisco’s restaurants are populated with its graduates, and beyond the Bay Area, people still know its name. But the academic atmosphere has changed since Career Education Corporation bought the school in 1999. In the first two years of the company’s ownership, the number of culinary students increased from 442 to 1,868. By the time former student Alan Livingston enrolled in May 2005, “it had a factory feel to it,” he says, and tuition for the 15-month culinary program was up to $45,000. Today, it’s about $47,000.
SF Weekly spoke with more than two dozen applicants, students, and graduates of CCA, and found a pattern of serious complaints. Many former students say admissions representatives told them whatever they thought the applicants needed to hear to get them to sign on the dotted line. The students claim admissions reps said it was a prestigious school that they would be lucky to gain admission to, when it actually admits anyone eligible for a student loan. The graduates say they were misled about the terms of their loans; many have since realized that by the time they finish making payments, they’ll have paid more than $100,000 for just 15 months of school. Finally, the students and graduates we spoke to were told that a CCA degree virtually guaranteed them a well-paying job at an elite restaurant. In fact, the majority went on to low-paying kitchen jobs — and many soon left the food industry entirely in search of salaries that would pay off their student debt.
Two former admissions representatives who worked at CCA confirm that students were misled. The former employees say admissions reps preyed on students’ dreams of becoming celebrity chefs, and glossed over the painful economic realities of the industry. The two women describe a high-pressure sales environment where the reps were focused solely on meeting enrollment numbers, not on finding students who would benefit from the program.
CCA’s parent company, Career Education Corporation, has faced similar accusations against some of its other schools — the corporation has recently been hit with eight lawsuits from disgruntled students around the country. Federal officials have begun to ask questions, too, and both the Education Department and the Justice Department have ongoing inquiries regarding Career Education. CCA has essentially gotten a free pass from the state regulators, however, as has every other for-profit college in California. The agency’s enforcement program is so ineffectual, state officials are allowing it to shut down this summer while they try to create a better alternative.
The president of CCA, Ann Gibson, said in a written response that she was disappointed to hear of the students’ complaints. “California Culinary Academy is proud of the Le Cordon Bleu culinary education we have provided to students over the years, and we are proud of our many happy students, graduates, and successful alumni,” she wrote. Gibson wrote that students should expect to start in entry-level positions after graduation, but that their CCA training should give them an advantage as they try to climb the career ladder.
You wouldn’t know it from talking to Ron Siegel, chef at the Ritz-Carlton’s prestigious Dining Room restaurant and one of CCA’s most famous graduates. He attended the school around 1990, and went on to win televised glory as the first American to win Iron Chef. Siegel says he doesn’t want any more CCA students in his kitchen. “The last one I took from there, the person came one time, and no-showed after that,” he says. “I don’t need that. So I probably wouldn’t take anyone from there again.”
andrew m. huesca said,
20 June 2007 at 6:09 pm
Hi, my name is Andrew, and I am a CCA grad i finished in 2004 and have monthly loans that equal 1100 per month. This amount is impossible for me to pay. I was also misled into believing a lot of things. I also worked in the financial dept and know a lot of inside info. If I can help, please call me at 415.238.7958 or email amhuesca@yahoo.com
Joel Rambaud said,
25 June 2007 at 5:16 pm
The CCA was already rotten to the core under Keith Keogh Leadership , back then the students had to demonstrate in the street …
I was an Instructor for 2 years . On the second year I had been told to give the students a passing grade , it make the student happy , the administration and student services are happy , Human resources are happy , the shareholder get their money and who care after your 2 weeks class they are out of here and graduated {this in my book was fraud} I was also told when I contested change in the curiculum “student producing more food in the paying outlet for outside guest ” I was told if anyone question it on the board of education we will present it as enhancement , it is just what they have done, Anyone with a large bill should see an attorney , chances are 90% were simply misled .
If you question their integrity as an Instructor I had 3 of this Country largest Brokerage Firm trying to roll over my 401K , I left the school in 1996 and was only able to collect it in 2007 , talk about honesty , even the liquidator of a prematurely deceased instructor were not able to access the Fund .
kirk sowell said,
26 July 2007 at 9:01 am
Chef Rambaud is absolutely correct. I attended in 95/ 96 and many of my classmates left the school after 1 month because of the focus the school put on money and not students. In general they took kids right out of high school and gave them knives before they had safety classes(I saw a girl split here thigh wide and I mean wide open when she tried to quickly dry her brand new roast knife on her apron). They didn’t care if the kids learned how to be chefs they just wanted the cash. There were some great Chefs still left at CCA when I was there and they saved the day as far as my training went but the management was awful.
joel lamca said,
4 September 2007 at 12:30 am
i currently attend cca. i just started two weeks ago and i have noticed a lot of kids in class dont have any idea what carreer choice they have made in life. and a lot of them have no idea what they are doing. i often wonder how they were accepted to a culinary school without any prior restaurant expierence. as i apply for jobs around the city i have found that a lot of restaurants want nothing to do with the cca kids . i feel like the classes go to fast and they dont take the time to explain things the way they should be. the teachers are overloaded with students and 75% of the students are lost. i transfered from a community college in new york that had a culinary program and i feel that i learned more at that junior college then what they have taught me at cca. the teachers tell us to read the chapters, and expect us to know everything about it without going over any diccusion. the classes focus on being hands on and learning and thats great. but there is no sense of education behind it , to fully understand the book you need to answer the questions after each chapter , fully understand the vocabulary and go over parts you dont understand . i feel that the opportunity to do that isnt given to the students . they dont test your knowledge of anything they assume that you know it. its such bullshit. each month of school is cost 3 grand . for that amount of money you could take a years worth of classes at san francisco city college. my room mate and my best friend dropped out of school within the first two weeks. he was deceived into the thought that the school was there to teach. sadly to find out that the admissions rep have a top recruitment list posted in the office rewarding who ever signed the most students. fuck that. which goes to show that all they care about is money. they only see one color and thats green .
Q said,
16 May 2008 at 8:30 am
I also attended CCA, I graduated last year in 07, I was lied to the entire time I went there. I was told that in the culinary program you were able to learn many of the pastry areas such as sugar pulling, chocolate sculpting and modeling, sugar blowing and sculptures, and I never learned any of it, even with trying to finagle with the other pastry chefs just to sit in on their class to see it. Nope, never happened. I was also told that great chefs graduate from CCA, and when I graduate I can get a job quickly as a sous-chef or even executive, and “own my own restaurant within 2 years”, They didn’t tell me that their turnover rate of shoddy prep-cooks, made it difficult to even get a job after graduation, and harder still to get an externship. I was blackballed from several places before they even met me, they looked at my education, raised their eyebrows in complete dissatisfaction and tossed my resume (that CCA so generously helped me write) across their desk back to me, explaining that they hold no merit in that school. I couldn’t even get an entry-level prep position. I have refinanced my loans, spent countless spare hours writing grants and gotten almost no where. I don’t pay quite as much as the poor fellows that didn’t have a co-signer, but I can tell you, here are only 3 people from my class that are still cooking, and all three of us have two or more jobs to survive. CCA is criminal for what they do to us, we’re nothing but a dollar symbol. If anyone has any information that could help, please pass it on,
Q – wolf.faer@yahoo.com
Heidi Brown said,
21 November 2008 at 2:04 pm
I graduated ‘04, and frankly I’m at a loss about this whole thing. I really feel both the school AND the students are to blame. First of all, I’d really like to know what was going through these students’ heads when they decided to enroll. “Being a chef in a kitchen…peice of cake??” Even the ones with no experience (I was one of those) must have actually dined at restaurants before and seen those tired, sweaty cooks making their food! Life is what you make of it! No school in my opinion, no matter what they charge or what they promise, is responsible for not teaching that motto. It’s common sense. Sure, the tuition was outrageous, you know this going into it. And yea, they promise affordable loans but everyone should know that’s always tricky business. I’m sorry I’m just not really seeing what case there is here to file a lawsuit. I signed up in ‘03, they gave me the whole song and dance about all my amazing opportunities, but I knew I would have to work hard for those! I got out of CCA just as much as I put into it. I knew I needed a degree and an internship somewhere amazing so I work my ass off to get that. I went to Tuscany for my internship and it changed my life. CCA gave me that. You can say what you want about all their lies, but I owe my amazing, life changing experience to them. But I made it happen. And when I came back, I staged and worked wherever I could to learn more, before finally stepping out of the kitchen and exploring other branches of the industry like food writing and restaurant administration. I’ve worked with magazines, newspapers, restaurants like Bouchon and Quince. And none of that would have happen had I not went to the CCA because it gave me that first small step. That’s all they can do…YOU have to do the rest.
In fact, the worst thing I can say about CCA is that they’ve shelled out so many shitty cooks lately I can’t even mention I went there sometimes. Their biggest fault is turning it into some kind of heald or devry business school shelling out degrees left and right to kids who are so unmotivated, so clueless that I almost wonder if they even liked cuisine…or was it just a coin toss? Like, heads-culinary school, tails-medical assistant? And CCA’s biggest fault is preying on kids like this, and reducing their curriculum in order to squeeze in as many victims as they can. But should they be sued for this? I don’t know. I think other businessmen like them would give them an award.
The last thought I’ll leave on this very long comment is this: Aren’t we all supposed to struggle and fight for what we’re passionate about? Doesn’t that make it better? And if you weren’t passionate about it, and just wanted an easy degree to get out there and start making cash, isn’t that your fault?
Nichole Dezek said,
29 April 2009 at 12:00 pm
Does anyone have information in regards to joining the class action lawsuit? Please email me Ndezek@yahoo.com