http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/us/08default.html
May 8, 2007
'Top Chef' Dreams Crushed by Student Loan Debt
By KIM SEVERSON
"Rick Park started working at a Jack in the Box in Austin, Tex., when he was
18. He moved on to sub shops, pizza parlors and chain restaurants, turning
out hundreds of meals during a shift.
But Mr. Park wanted to be a chef. So like tens of thousands of other young
people who grew up in the age of kitchen celebrities like Bobby Flay and
Emeril Lagasse, he enrolled in culinary school.
Two years after graduation, all the "Bam!" has been drained from the dream.
Mr. Park makes $10.50 an hour at a bistro in Austin best known for its
French fries, trying to pay down his student loans. While he dodges phone
calls from the bank, his mother helps him make his $705 monthly payments,
almost twice his weekly take-home pay.
"I wouldn't wish this on anyone," Mr. Park, 29, said before starting another
night shift at the Hyde Park Bar and Grill. "I put my degree on
applications, and they make fun of me for it."
In the way that the work of directors like Martin Scorsese flooded film
schools with students in the 1970s, and the television show "L.A. Law"
packed law schools in the 1980s, the rise of celebrity chefs has been good
for culinary schools.
But would-be top chefs face a challenge that most lawyers, engineers or
nurses do not: few jobs in their chosen field pay enough for them to retire
their student loans. As a result, as many as 11 percent of graduates at some
culinary schools are defaulting on federal student loans. The national
average for all students last year was roughly half that, at 5.1 percent.
Although the restaurant industry is expected to create two million new jobs
in the next decade, the Department of Labor reports that in 2005, the latest
year for which data were available, the average hourly wage for a restaurant
cook was $9.86.
"The problem isn't getting a job, the problem is getting a high-paying job,"
said Susan Sykes Hendee, a dean at Baltimore International College and a
member of the American Culinary Federation Foundation Accrediting
Commission, which accredits many culinary schools.
Many of the schools offer two-year programs where the total tuition and
supply costs can reach $48,000. Only a slice of that is covered by
low-interest federal loans. For example, the most that students in two-year
programs can currently borrow in federal loans is $14,125.
So, many of them seek money from banks that are usually recommended by the
school. The terms on some of these private loans can quickly get a young
person with little borrowing experience into financial trouble.
Mr. Park said that when he and his mother met with a financial-aid counselor
at the school, they were told that his payments on his private loan, from
Sallie Mae, would be about $250 a month. But his first bill after graduation
was for more than twice that, said his mother, Elise McClain, an English
professor in Florida. They twice requested payment deferments while he
looked for a job but when they began repaying the loan, both his principal
and his monthly payment had risen again. The balance is now $46,198.88 at
just over 16 percent interest.
"They had us sign a pack of papers," Ms. McClain said. "Of course, it was as
big as a phone book and maybe I should have paid more attention. I just feel
so stupid."
Advocates trying to change the student loan system say culinary students
have a particularly difficult time with student loans.
"Truly the worst horror stories are from private culinary schools," said
Alan Collinge, who founded the grass-roots lobbying group Student Loan
Justice and collects information from people with student loan problems.
"The story is always the same. The school convinces the student they are
going to be the next Julia Child or Wolfgang Puck, and the student will sign
anything."
Many culinary students come from blue-collar families and do not have the
financial experience to navigate the world of college costs, Ms. Sykes
Hendee said. "The majority of students are the first people going to college
in their families," she said. "It's not the rich and famous going to
culinary school."
Culinary schools can only do so much to help students avoid trouble with
private loans, said Lynne Baker, a vice president of the Career Education
Corporation, a publicly traded company that runs more than 80 colleges.
Fourteen of those are culinary schools, including the Texas Culinary
Academy, which Mr. Park attended.
"We always steer our students to try to exhaust all their federal and state
loans before they look for alternative funding," Ms. Baker said. "This is a
national issue. The reality is the federal dollars just don't cut it for
students anymore."
Culinary training can cost more than other kinds of schooling, Ms. Baker and
other educators say, because classrooms are often small, fully equipped
kitchens, and supplies include expensive food and wine. And, she added, her
schools produce thousands of happy graduates, many of whom end up as
executive chefs at hotels or own their own restaurants.
Certainly, professional training can help cooks move up quickly through the
kitchen ranks. And culinary schools have produced many of the nation's
finest chefs.
But some of those chefs equivocate about whether the high cost of some
culinary degrees is worth it for someone who just wants to cook for a
living. Sufficient training could come from community colleges or other
basic programs that offer certificates for less than the cost of a year's
worth of books, equipment and uniforms at a brand-name culinary school.
"Cooking is a trade you do with your hands, so basically culinary school is
a $30,000 trade school," said Ann Cooper, a chef who serves as director of
nutrition for the Berkeley Unified School District in California. "What a
lot of schools tell these kids is they are going to be sous chefs making
$30,000 or $40,000 a year." A beginning restaurant cook, by contrast, may
earn about $20,000 a year.
Ms. Cooper is a 1977 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde
Park, N.Y. When she attended, that school and Johnson & Wales University in
Rhode Island were at the top of a short list an ambitious student would
consider.
Today, the choices have ballooned. When Dorlene Kaplan began publishing the
ShawGuides to cooking schools in 1989, the book listed 125 professional
schools offering everything from simple certificates to four-year degrees.
Now, the book lists 447 schools.
Tim Ryan, the president of the Culinary Institute of America, estimates that
62,000 students are in culinary schools, 35 percent more than five years
ago.
About 72 percent of the schools that offer two- or four-year culinary
degrees are community colleges or public institutions, Mr. Ryan said. The
rest are run by for-profit companies like the Art Institutes and the Career
Education Corporation.
As a result of competition and of changes in the food industry, culinary
schools are maturing. More schools are becoming accredited, and top-tier
schools are raising academic standards and focusing on education beyond
mastering French sauces. Liberal arts or business courses train students to
work in a broader array of jobs like manufacturing, publishing, television
and food science.
Good SAT scores and some experience in the food industry are required to get
into the Culinary Institute of America, which has developed four-year tracks
that emphasize writing, business skills, marketing and technology as well as
cooking. A master's program is not far off, Mr. Ryan said.
But for thousands of young people with Michelin stars in their eyes, the
dream is not about working for a food corporation or mastering nutrition
science.
They want to cook. They just did not realize how deep in debt they would end
up.
Erica Reichlin said the California Culinary Institute in San Francisco,
which she graduated from in 2005, helped her build a good foundation of
culinary skills. But it also landed her almost $84,000 in debt, with a mix
of federal and private loans she used for tuition, housing and other costs.
After working at a restaurant and for a caterer in San Francisco, Ms.
Reichlin decided her culinary career and finances would be better served in
New York. Besides, it was home.
Now Ms. Reichlin, 29, is executive chef at a Long Island yacht club and a
line cook at a restaurant called CatFish Max in Seaford, N.Y. Her
grandfather co-signed a new loan, and her payments are now about $600 a
month at 8 percent interest.
Of the 32 people in her class at the culinary academy, she said, only 3 are
still cooking.
One of her classmates, she recalls, bragged at the beginning of their
program that he would make it to the Food Network.
"I was like, 'Are you kidding me?' " she said. "Now he's working at a
country club in Florida."
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