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Culinary School: From Campus to Kitchen

By Wendy Croix

If the gap between studying the culinary arts and getting a job seems huge, don't worry. The school-to-work transition is built into your culinary school curriculum. Cooking is intelligence, but it's also a set of practical skills, so through your culinary arts program you learn by doing. If practice makes perfect culinary school techniques, perfect culinary techniques make you employable. Your culinary school should open a career door for you.

Community College Culinary Arts Degree Programs

Whereas four-year schools focus on your general education as well as your culinary arts training, two-year culinary degree programs tend to be more practice oriented. Their goal is to get you into the kitchen and your first job. Diploma programs at cooking schools tend to be even more career-focused. But any of these choices includes practical experience in a working kitchen to fill that first slot on your resume.

"I don't graduate chefs," says community college culinary arts instructor Nader Sharkes. "I graduate workers. You start at the bottom and work your way up." Chef Sharkes' foot-in-the-door realism reflects his school's vocational education emphasis.

Getting the Most for Your Culinary School Investment

If you're a practical person who's willing to work your way up the kitchen hierarchy, then you want to enroll in a program whose mission is to get you off the campus and into your first culinary job.

  • One great way to find out about your culinary school's perceived mission is to check the school's self-description on its website. If your school emphasizes working degrees, it should say so.
  • Look for a culinary arts school or program that gives you job placement numbers. This tells you how many graduates are working in the culinary arts field. Be cautious about schools that talk more about the prestige of your degree than about the places that hired their graduates.
  • Ask who in the program is responsible for job placement. If the answer is "nobody," then you might be wise to choose another culinary school.

A little research can put you in a culinary school that meets your immediate culinary career goals.

Sources

"Culinary programs work to bridge classroom-kitchen gap," by Dina Berta. Nation's Restaurant News 39.30 (July 25, 2005).

"Students get a taste for elbow grease," by Matt Krupnick. (Walnut Creek, CA) Contra Costa Times (December 12, 2005).

About the Author
Wendy Croix, Ph.D. is a freelance writer, cultural critic and university professor. In her twenty years as a professional educator, Wendy has guided hundreds of students toward the careers of their dreams.