Culinary School + Cost + Advice + Warning

Think I'm the only one warning people about the high cost of culinary school vs. the low paying jobs available to culinary school graduates = cooks?

Kim Severson's NY Times article doesn't beat around the bush when she reports the figures, the defaulting loans, the interest rates on private loans, and the people who realize they aren't chefs, but cooks, when they graduate from culinary school.

Like Chris Cosentino reiterated in the Sunday May 6 SF Chronicle, if you want to be a chef, you have to work hard. For a long time.

The NY Times & the Chronicle links will be live for one week, after that you'll need to pay to view them.

Comments

[Joe Fish]

Brava, Shuna, for truth. Labor needs to come out of the closet at long last in the US. What we do is work, demanding work and is only really learned on the job, no matter how many principles can be learned in the classroom.

If TV cameras can make commercial fishing look glamorous...

[Jim]

Reading articles like this just makes me want to cry. What is the world coming to? So much in life has just become greedy and devoid of personal satisfaction. The uninformed are preyed upon by everyone looking for an opportunity to make a buck, putting them into a worse place than they were to begin with.

"Higher Education" itself seems to be out of control. So much time spent charging people a fortune to read out of an overpriced book by an expert, when they could be learning so much more by being out in the world working and solving real problems.

[Aaron]

Marco Pierre White's statement (the era of the cook is gone, young chefs don't want to be chefs, just celebrities) has been reiterated constantly of late. That's just BS! I'm not saying that idea hasn't attracted a lot of cooks to the kitchen, but if that's your reason for being there, there is no way you will last. The work is simply too hard to continue doing if food isn't in your soul.
I'm just sick of hearing "gone are the good ole days," whether that be in reference to the kitchen, sexual values, moral standards or anything else your grandma or an older chef might object to.
Okee dokee...I'll get off my soap box.

[Aaron]

Back on my soapbox...
Shuna! I have another pie (cherry, peach, vanilla bean) in the oven. I'm going to fail my finals because of you!!! I'm only half-kidding.

[Lynn D.]

Shuna, Lindy's (of Toast) daughter, redfox, shared this tip on how you can make a permalink of the article in your post:

Look over to the right-hand side of the article, where it says

E-Mail
Print
Reprints
Save
Share

Click "Share". Then click "Permalink", and you'll get a pop-up window containing a URL that will continue to lead directly to the full article, even after it's been archived: "To link to this article from your blog, copy and paste the url below into your blog or homepage. Using this link will ensure access to the article, even after it becomes part of the NYT archive."

[shuna fish lydon]

Lynn D-- GREAT comment! Hopefully all will see this as they attempt to access it in the future!

[sam]

the prefect permalink unfortunately just takes me back to your comments and nowhere near the NYT?

[shuna fish lydon]

Sam,

I was just now brought to the sign-in page for the Times and the actual article for the Chronicle. But it appears that Typepad is a bit wonky at the moment... perhaps try again later?