The end result is a glut of programs all vying to meet their enrollment numbers.  Enrollment standards inevitably begin to lax while program faculty face the challenge of trying to teach and train an ill-prepared audience for the rigors and realities of kitchen life.

Here are the real challenges that educators face:

• The cost of a quality culinary education far exceeds the earning potential of most graduates in their first 10 or so years in the kitchen.
• Even with thousands of culinary graduates each year, restaurants are challenged to find cooks who are adequately prepared.
• Far too many graduates have exaggerated career expectations when they complete a program.
• The U.S. Department of Education and regional accrediting bodies are very concerned about the cost of education/earnings gap. Most culinary-school graduates will likely begin as either a prep or line cook and stay in that rotation for the first few years, earning an hourly wage without benefits.
• A growing concern is the retention rate of students in culinary programs and a high attrition rate of people entering the industry after graduation.
• Internship programs are the training lifeblood of a quality program, yet they are typically very loose, properties are rarely trained as internship sites and, in some cases, internships do not align with a restaurant’s season, making the process cumbersome for chefs and restaurateurs.
• Far too few graduates consider alternative career tracks to working in high-end restaurants. Business-and-industry foodservice, hospitals, college dining programs, product development and teaching all take a back seat to a student’s desire to seek the excitement and “glamour” of working in a critically acclaimed à la carte restaurant.

Is it time to reassess what a culinary program should look like? If you believe the answer is yes, then every program dean and department chair should attend CAFÉ’s Deans and Directors Retreat, “Managing Change,” next February in Chicago.

Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC, president of Harvest America Ventures, a “mobile restaurant incubator” based in Saranac Lake, N.Y., is the former vice president of New England Culinary Institute and a former dean at Paul Smith’s College. Contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.harvestamericaventures.com.