She could have bought a cook book for $50 & saved herself a lot of money & time.
High end restaurants tend to hire from these culinary institutions. You do learn a lot at culinary school - I did one year - and it is not easy. But even high end restaurants do not pay line chefs a great deal of money. You have to work yourself up in a very difficult industry.
One of my son-in-laws never went to college, just average grades in high school. He did however hold various jobs in restaurants and learned to cook while earning money. All without college. But... he pulls in over $5000 after expenses selling lemonade at weekend events, can make enough money in a few weeks to last the year. He has vendor trailers and permits. Yes, makes more money with lemonade than cooking (but it's awesome lemonade). Outside that, he does carpentry and sheetrock, no college required, no loans to worry about.
$10.00 would have bought her both a used Betty Crocker Cookbook for the basics along with a used Julia Child’s Master the Art of French Cooking for graduate studies. Not knowing she’d racked up $100k in debt and didn’t care proves she’s too stupid to boil water.