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 Post subject: CIA students stage walkout
PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 12:48 am 
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Location: Portland, OR
Apparently a bunch of CIA students staged a walkout the other day, over rising tuition and declining standards at the institution:

Lindsay's piece: http://www.eatyourbooks.com/blog/2013/4 ... l-worth-it
Source article: http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2013/04/s ... itute.html

I have somewhat of a perspective on this, since I watched (and had friends who attended) the California Culinary Academy, which went from being a top cooking school and alma mater to many chefs to having its accredidation revoked, being sued by students, closing half the classrooms and the restaurant, and "reorganizing" (with a highly uncertain future) in less than a decade. Everyone in SF expects the CCA to shut down permanently within the next two years.

And the complaints of the plaintiffs? That the school charged too much and had lax standards, so that they were paying a lot for a worthless education.

What to you folks think of the value of culinary schools? Has the CIA outlived its mission?

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 Post subject: Re: CIA students stage walkout
PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 8:16 am 
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Back in the 80's the son of my Dad's boss attended CIA. When he came home to visit, most of the things he bragged about learning were ways of "faking" expensive ingredients when preparing dishes in restaurant dishes, thus lowering the cost. I doubt they've improved since then.

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 Post subject: Re: CIA students stage walkout
PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 2:33 pm 
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That certainly did NOT happen when I was there 92-94!
We were complaining about lower standards back then, though. Once the school reduced the requirement for previous professional experience from two years to something like six months (I haven't checked what it is now) they started to get lots of students who had romanticized the idea of working in a kitchen, and the school set up taught them little of the real, grueling labor that you really have to deal with.
That said, I find my culinary education to be much better from the CIA than the education I see folks getting at just about every vo-tech college or community college in the country. The knowledge base I aquired there has been invaluable throughout my years in the industry.
Could I have learned much of what I got from food school on the job? Sure. Would I have gotten it in the same depth, and with the same connections made between methods and ingredients? probably not. The people I work with show what I consider an amazing ignorance about foods, cultures, and so on, for folks who have been cooking for over five years.
I do not use everything I was taught. I have never dealt with pastillage, or carved ice, or made another galantine, or some of the nifty sausages we made in class.
Have culinary schools out lived their missions? NO. It helps to understand that the mission of the CIA is giving a solid foundation to professionals, who will then go on to expand and improve the industry overall. It isn't to create instant "Great Chefs". However, as the demand grew, and the potential supply of new students and thus more money, also grew, greed has affected the school, and culinary schools in general. So the campus has gotten fancier and fancier, with new sponsored buildings and nifty dorms and I think even a gym. But it sure isn't a cheap school, and I have no idea how much of that is going into the profit column, as the CIA isn't a not for profit enterprise.
I once tried to explain to one of the administrators why having more graduates wasn't necessarily a good thing, and why having a higher failure rate would be better for the school over all, and he failed to see the point. He also thought that anyone could teach, so was often hiring fairly famous chefs who couldn't teach their way out of a wet paper bag.
Still and all, about the most useful thing I learned through the many kitchens of the CUA was to say "yes, chef" no matter that I was being told to do something my last class had taught me was incorrect.


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