Traci Joyce, who graduated from California Culinary Academy $130,000 in debt, handles pizza dough at Zachary's Chicago Pizza in San Ramon - where she worked before cooking school.
Posted on 05/03/2011 11:43:43 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
For the next 20 years, Matt Foist will be paying off his $46,000 in cooking-school loans, and all he says he has to show for it is a useless chef's diploma, a nice set of knives - but no job.
He said he'd be lucky to make $15 an hour in the culinary world, even though the school told him he would land jobs with annual salaries of $45,000. So he's gone back to his software career.
The 46-year-old, who believes he was scammed by San Francisco's California Culinary Academy, is one of the representatives of a class-action lawsuit in which a $40 million settlement offer from the cooking school is pending.
As part of the settlement, the 8,500 students who attended the academy from 2003 through 2008 were notified last month that they could be eligible for rebates of up to $20,000 each. Tuition prices are typically $46,000 for a 12-month program and an additional three months of on-the-job training.
A hearing to approve the settlement is scheduled for Aug. 22.
In addition, Career Education Corp., the parent company of CCA (it also owns 15 other vocational colleges, including the Texas Culinary Academy and Le Cordon Bleu), has agreed to eat $1.8 million in student debt.
But for many, it's not enough. They say the dream they were sold to be high-paid chefs was bogus. And now they're faced with enormous student loans to pay off - some in excess of $100,000, after deferrals and interest accruals.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Traci Joyce, who graduated from California Culinary Academy $130,000 in debt, handles pizza dough at Zachary's Chicago Pizza in San Ramon - where she worked before cooking school.
Le Cordon Bleu it................
Couldn’t this same argument be made about most universities (public or private)?
The biggest argument for going to college is that it will increase your earnings over your lifetime. But the fact is a significant percentage of college degrees are all but worthless in that regard.
I believe it’s still true that the majority of college graduates do not work in the same field as their degree. If so, then exactly what did their college degree (and huge student loans) get these people?
I don’t mind the for profits getting some scrutiny, but, how about some looks at the universities and state u’s?
The job market is awful out there from what I read. A niece of my hubby said in 2008 only 30% of Purdue grads got a job. Shutting down the for profits won’t change that.
In fact, the way it is now, the system is set up to make debt slaves of the middle class, while the “victim” class will get a free education.
THAT is wrong, plain and simple.
She would have been better off taking that $130K and opening her own pizza parlor.
The problem is that student loans are now a profit center for the government. There’s no financial incentive for the government to go after these types of schools because they would lose a nice revenue stream of people paying inescapable student loan interest.
I’m a chef and have been for the past 15 years. I have seen some of the WORST educated people come from LCB and the likes. The most I’ve ever made in the field, as an Executive chef was 42k. no bonus, no benefits. If they are saying thats what you’re going to make coming out of school, the people believing them are idiots. I have an intern work for me who went to LCB in Sacramento. he paid 20k, spent 6 moths there and never even used his knife to cook with in school. It’s a rip at this point going to a culinary school. yes you will learn a LOT. but the market right now can not handle the pay rate to support your debt coming out of school.
Cooking has become a cash cow since the likes of Guy Fieri, iron chef and the other cooking shows on TV. in the end, it’s hot, dirty, hours on AVERAGES ARE 60hrs A WEEK! you don’t see your family, and have no social life. They should teach them THAT the first week and then see if they REALLY want to work in a kitchen.
I went to CCA in 85 and then graduated, tuition was 8K then and different owners. Like most professions there are naturals, unfortunately they take anyone these days who can pay tuition, that is their only criteria. Seniors don’t know what a rue is.
130,000 for a damn cooking school, hell my niece just finished pharmacy school for less than that.
You are so right.
I was listening to John and Ken (LA talk radio KFI) and they were discussing a pamphlet from the State Prison Guards about how their line of work paid better than a Harvard degree.
It was a riot. There stats were such that they would make more than a Harvard degree, more vacation, better benefit, more pay, and only four months to go to their “Academy” and they would PAY YOU to go to their academy.
College isn’t what it used to be anymore.
“She would have been better off taking that $130K and opening her own pizza parlor.”
That’s a no-sh**er. $130K for chefs school? What are these people thinking?
They will rue the day they ever heard of gravy...................
What I find pathetic is that community colleges have poorly performing students taking student loans to enroll in remedial classes that they couldn’t pass in high school.
Sorry, but if they don’t make the cut in HS, they have no business going to college. College is not for everyone, regardless of what the politicians would like you to believe.
Most all colleges and specialty schools are for profit. There are just variations in who profits and by what mechanism they realize their take of the profits.
But college tuition increases are one of the few costs that have kept up with medical cost increases, and that has been financed by loan programs and scholarship programs, as well as the full paying parents of many students.
Had a neice who was engaged to a nice guy who had acquired a $260,000 debt getting a 4 year degree in “Theater”. A debt that bankrupcy will not erase - he delivers pizza and volunteers at a local theater company.
Luckily, they never did get married; but this poor fool is now 28 and is realizing that unless Hollywood comes knocking - he will live in poverty the rest of his life.
All thanks to a University with no ethics, and a School Finance program with no interest in even considering the ability of a graduate to pay for the schooling that was ‘sold’ to them.
Wisdom comes with age and experience - those that survive the experience, gain wisdom.
“She would have been better off taking that $130K and opening her own pizza parlor.”
Unfortunately, taxpayers would not have given her $130,000 for opening a pizza parlor. Taxpayers did give her $130,000 for culinary school.
“College is not for everyone, regardless of what the politicians would like you to believe.”
Sure it is. Just ask the Affirmative Action babies who currently reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
And for the exact same reasons. The Government has inserted itself into the market and distorted the actual worth of the institution.
Before pel grants, student loans, and GI bills, few people went to college, yet those are the people that built this country. They where the entrepreneurs that built the steel mills and the bridges. The infrastructure and the organizations that worked.
‘
the age of the college graduate has brought us Bureaucratic nightmares and a lack of people that can actually make anything that actualyworks.
The Medical field and the education field are not part of the free market and the cost shows it.
‘Most all colleges and specialty schools are for profit. There are just variations in who profits and by what mechanism they realize their take of the profits.’
Technically, you are wrong in that profit has a specific meaning for private enterprise accounting. Conceptually, you are correct. Public universities have a good racket with substantial support from state legislatures and donors as well as the ability to increase tuition at whim. In Colorado, public universities have remained almost untouched from the difficult economic times. Although there has been no raise pool for three years, there have been few layoffs even though the employment level zoomed in the good years. Amazingly, the regents just authorized another large tuition increase (9 to 9.3%) on top of a decade of tuition increases (how can I invest in this racket?) The regents gave approval for a conditional raise pool depending on some conditions.
I sent a message to a prominent Republican regent who voted for the tuition increase. I asked him to look at my study of pension compensation for university retirees. Royal retirement and pension spiking are understatements for the large amounts of surplus deferred compensation.
You will rarely hear anyone in the university indicate that tuition is too high. To the contrary, most faculty, administrators, and staff assert just the opposite. They believe that tuition should be high or at least that the state should shovel more subsidies. I would be burned at the academic stake for straight talk about higher education. I would be laughed out of any meeting room for suggesting that higher education is a bloated system operating with little regards to costs. Much of higher education could be remade to drastically reduce costs through commodization of the product, standardization of the evaluation, and unbundling services. Instead, universities actually charge more for online classes although the vast majority of online classes are not professionally developed.
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