Is Culinary School bad for students?

"Chef Shawn Murphy is a graduate of Niagara College Culinary Institute............."

That is how my intro started for Iron Chef Niagara as well as the intro of my future competitor Mathew. There are quite a few chefs that I know that have gone to some kind of culinary program whether it has been at CIA, Le Cordon Bleu or community programs such as Niagara College. So if that is the case than why do I feel so bad about the state of our culinary programs?

If you ask chefs around the region I guarantee many would have good and bad things to say about these programs. The problem for me is this exact answer that I get all the time....."They know absolutely nothing". How is it that 100+ students can graduate from a class and be so lost in the kitchen. How is it that so many kids stop cooking after they see what a real kitchen is like. So my answer to that is this. Culinary Schools DO NOT prepare you for the real world. I have seen kids in the final year who still can not hold a knife, who could not tell you about mother sauces or even how to butcher a piece of protein.

My solution to this is one that Culinary Programs like Niagara College hate; Go the apprentice route. Sign on with the best chef you can possibly find and go through the programs for your mandatory stay. Unless you have a rich family I find CIA and Le Cordon Bleu too expensive for those not destined to be the best of the best. You are lucky to make $24,000 now a days in a kitchen when you first start out. Restaurants get breaks in taxes and incentives to take on apprentices and a chef can mold them. Canada is so different to how things are done in Europe, but I feel that if more and more students did this they would be more dedicated and prepared. Unfortunately education is big business, but as more and more kids waste their money on education I feel that they should put their money where it really matters. Classes in College are too easy and University has no hands on, so what are the next generation suppose to do. In a time where every kid has a degree of some sort a piece of paper is not enough. Life experience is the only way to succeed now. I would hire someone who has been working a real kitchen for 2 years vs a 2 year graduate from a culinary program any day of the week. I myself learned more in 6 month stays with Hillebrand and Inn on the Twenty then in 2 years at school, the only problem with fine dinning establishments in this area is the issue of seasonality.

So if you want to be the next top chef, culinary programs are far from the best and only option. The culinary world is a passionate and competitive business, so there is no room for "trying" your best. A failed dish is a failed dish in a customers eyes, they do not care what you try to do. Maybe it is up to the culinary programs to put more reality into the eyes of these young budding super stars. I currently have 4 young cooks that go to school and I look at what they do and give them pointers. If only more chefs in these programs would do the same, maybe the level of food and understanding of ingredients would be that much better. They are usually shocked when I comment on a dish. I don't just tell them it is bad, too much salt or good job. I tell them how to make it better and why doing something a different way benefits them. A young mind can be bended in any direction, so bend it in the way that all of them want to become better.

I am proud of my time at Niagara because I went the extra mile working directly with chefs to become better. The students that take initiative will succeed and often are the ones I see with culinary programs like Niagara College on their resume. If only the chefs would take that initiative and be specific on what is wrong with these dishes. Entrepreneurs like me are depending on them to create the next group of employees who are knowledgeable and skilled. Employees who can create, think and progress, not ones that are lost and need to be retrained.

So are culinary schools bad for students? I don't think that they are, but I think they are far from being the only path to this industry and the talent within it. Chefs are losing faith in these programs and that is the saddest sight of all.