And I’ll gladly dismiss the suit and waive our fee (despite of having already done tens of thousands of dollars worth of work) if CCA/CEC will promptly refund the money of all those who feel misled, and pay the interest on the high-interest loans of all those CCA graduates, if any, whom CCA wrongly failed to tell that it was receiving benefits from lenders for selling above-market rate loans.

It does concern me that so many students report being misled as to placement realities and starting salaries, and that there are reports CCA received undisclosed benefits from lenders for selling above-market loans.

Contrary to the imagination of some sources quoted above, my firm is a reputable firm with a very real client list. We have degrees from top notch schools and were trained in some of the best big name law firms. We only seek to bring consumer cases against people who, based on our investigation, appear to us to have intentionally misled people in order to sell their produdcts or services. (As a economist by training, I believe that removing false-hype about products or services from the marketplace is good for business and consumers both.)

You can blame the victim if you want. Victims are always, in retrospect, ill advised. In retrospect, they should have done something else. But they’re still victims. And just because you were smarter than they were, if you were, that doesn’t mean you should be either unkind or unsympathetic.

We would like to hear from all CCA students and graduates, satisfied or unsatisifed. We do want to ensure that all those who feel wronged speak with us and, if appropriate, join in the lawsuit we filed yesterday.

One of the things I’ve been considering is looking into the UC Davis Food Chem program. I am fascinated by this stuff. It’s kind of a hobby of mine.

It amuses me no end when I see baby “chefs” pulling vials of chemicals that anyone can buy in a drugstore, and using them to pull off magic tricks that any commercial food chemist would scoff at.

What’s even funnier is Ferran Adria’s website where he sells repackaged stuff like agar and guar gum for $$$ like it’s cocaine. What a scam!

I have a little food product development project that I’m working on, and I’d love some advice. Where can I get ahold of you?

I had/have NO issue whatsoever with anyone who has health or physical issues being admitted to c-school — or ANY school or profession.

What I did have a prob with is that these particular students used their own issues to conveniently wriggle out of doing whatever work they did not feel like doing, whenever it was convenient for them.

My mother is severly allergic and has asthma, and so does my brother. I know what an impending severe allergic reaction looks like, and what to do to remediate it.

The girl with allergies reappeared in my two more of my classes and she almost daily claimed to be about to have an attack as soon as it was time to start doing any hands on work.

At first, like the mom I am, I ran over with my little purse emergency kit with offers of Benadryl, cortisone cream, Sudaphed, etc., but Allergy Girl always insisted that the only cure was to “go lie down at home”, and she managed to arrange to have a succession of other student s do virtually all of her work for her.

On the second to last day of the last class, her own class boyfriend finally even lost his temper with her and said “How are you gonna get a job when you have never actually done ANY of the work yourself?”.

In the first couple of weeks, the diabetic girl talked as though the school was finally a place to escape her mother’s over-protectiveness, and she went on an eating binge that even she sniggeringly admitted would “give her mother a fit”.
…What it did was land her in the hospital by the 3rd week of class, and she was forced to drop out on doctors orders…

One of my own personal interests is coming up with recipes for people on restricted diets, including my mother. I myself have a digestive prob which is aggravated by yeast and sugar. I am STILL on medication trying to shake the systemic yeast infection I contracted during breads class — which was further aggravated by my own foolhardiness in thinking that a few months of tasting what we made in class wouldnt do any lasting damage…I was wrong.

Actually, it was my insistance on doing the my projects on my own that made me unpopular with many other students. It jeopardized their CYA of their very effective method of cheating; the buddy system.

Since I could finish the stuff alone in a much shorter time than another student could do their share of the project — times 3 or 4 — while their friends hung out at the bar or slept in the dorm room, it made things uncomfortable for all, including the Chef — who was pressured to look the other way at the CEC controlled schools behest.

There was drama during my time in school, too – 98% of happening to and with our particular class, though it wasn’t because of the cooking itself. We were legendary in CSCA history because of it.

Side note: My Baking 110 instructor was diabetic.

We had a staggering amount of things to cover in one evening class period (I took the night classes as well). We started at 3 and ended around 11. If we were late with getting the food to the Chef’s table, we got out later. Nobody wanted to be there past 11 so we were done on time. For all you non-culinary school people keep in mind this includes cleaning all our own dishes and utensils, and, SCRUBBING DOWN THE KITCHEN EVERY NIGHT. All the cleaning crews did was mop the floors.

On any given night we had a huge list of things to make that night and to prep for the next night.

Here’s an example. Here’s what you had to know by the end of Week 3 in Baking 130 -
(p.s. there were only 6 weeks in class total):

Biscuit joconde, french buttercream, ganache, battenburg sponge, marzipan, coffee rum syrup, gateau opera, almond meringue discs, how to assemble a Battenburg, Feuille d’Automne, all variations of chocolate mousse, poached fruits, lemon curd, 3 variations on ganache, poured sugar, spun sugar, caramel cages, swiss meringue nests, French meringue, Italian meringue.

Here’s the syllabus for that week (we stuck to it):

Day 11 – Theory: Discuss European layered gateaux, tortes, etc.
Review cake batter mixing method
Discuss difference between Italian and French buttercream

Demonstration: European style layered cakes
Practical: European style layered cakes
Homework: Read Chapter 12, Cake Mixing and Baking

Day 12:
Theory: Discuss meringue production and uses
Discuss difference between French, Italian, and Swiss meringues
Talk through assembly of Battenburg cake

Demonstration: European style layered cakes assembly
Practical: European style layered cakes assembly
Homework: Review cake mixixg and baking procedure
Read Ch. 20: Chocolate

Day 13:
Theory: Discuss dessert platter presentation
Recap meringue production methods
Review Feuille d’Automne production

Demonstration: Meringue based desserts
Practical Meringue based desserts
Homework: Review Chocolate
Finalize plans for dessert platter

Day 14
Theory: Meringue
Discuss meringue faults in baked meringues
Discuss sugar cooking techniques
Review sugar cooking temps

Demonstration: Introduction to sugar work
Practical Intro to sugar work
Homework: Review course contents for final exam

So basically by Pastry 130 (16 weeks into the program) were were constructing those enormous 5 foot high sugar pieces and working on wedding cakes.

There was no buddying-up either – each individual had to produce a full set of products to the chef every night.

Gotta cover my ass – just in case.

It’s like the internet has just become one big keyword data-mined minefield. You post one freaking blog comment, and the next thing you know some yahoo has a whole google page with your email address linked to your home address, your credit report and your blood type.
AT&T merged with Sprint, they picked up Amp’d, and now they’ve got you tracked by GPS 24/7 and their new slogan is “Where you at?”, and the punchline is “WE KNOW where you AT!”.
…oh yeah, and then there is that freaky “Google Earth” satellite imaging thing since 2 weeks ago, where you can be logged in with your DSL or your wi-fi, and you click on “Where I’m At?” and the thing zooms in from outer space practically right through your front door like a fucking SCUD missile!

Jeez – I can see my own lawn furniture right this minute in real time from Mars! Oh look — my cat’s taking a shit!

Hmmm…things have changed alot. This was a BIG part of my ongoing battles with the (constantly changing) faculty and admin while I was there.

The prob was, the chef instructors were all up in arms about how to grade us. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I got there in the middle of the CEC/CCA shit storm.

Started in a class with only 8 students — all them under 22 (except me). Before it was too late to get the $ back, 3 had dropped out, including a morbidly obese insulin-dependent diabetic (this was the BAKING&PASTRY program), and a girl who claimed to have have a severe allergies, including wheat, gluten, and apparently also (she claimed) that “Smurf blue” food coloring the school uses to identify the re-usable practice cake frosting. The last time I saw her in that class group she claimed to be going into impending anaphylactic(?) shock…

By the second class (Cakes), the class was down to 5, incl. me. One guy worked ’til over an hour after the class started, but he claimed to have worked in his family’s bakery in the Phillippines, so the chef initially looked the other way.

Turned out that tho only “baking” this family bakery had done was all from frozen pre-packaged pastry and cake, and all that the guy actually knew how to do was decorate (But boy could he decorate!). I felt for him though, and so I tried to help bail him out while he tried to re-work his work schedule.

Since it was such a small class, and I had pretty extensive baking experience already, I could watch the chef demo and knock out the assignment in oh, 4 hrs., tops. I started working on my own so that I could clean up my end of the room and split early.

The rest of the children (except one) did not even know enough math to weigh out the ingredients, so they set up a little fire brigade. The one guy would do all the weighing/measuring, another kid would write down the recipe, another would stir the bowl, and one would watch the oven, and then the Filipino guy would blow in and decorate for the whole crew.

Meanwhile, chef was running his own “adult themed” cake catering biz out of the classroom, using the school’s supplies for his own stuff. His “Ball Gag” S&M themed gay wedding cake stands out in my memory…

Still, after having read “Kitchen Confidential”, I thought that this was possibly all just good practice for my anticipated professional kitchen career.

(sigh…) I could write a book about this whole thing. It seemed amusing at the start — this IS San Francisco after all — and I have to say that the Jesuit university I attended in 1976-80 had some pretty wild and crazy monks as professors too.

Maybe my expectations for cooking school were too low? But then, I had only read Bourdain. I had not yet read Ruhlman. I shit you not! I really thought it was all just part of the show…

…’til things got ugly

The Chef Instructors were all great chefs, and (once I switched to a different class group) the students were cranking out fantastic shit.

Perhaps part of the diff was that I was in the evening program (3pm – 10pm) so there were quite a few students (in the group I switched to) with some restaurant experience and/or career changers with functioning brains.

Before the Dean of Students left/was forced out, he heard that I was having a hard time suffering the fools I had been initially placed into a class with, so he called me and offered to jump me ahead to a class that was known for being a particularly good group of students. Then the idea was that I would swing around at the end and pick up the class I skipped and the tail end of my time there.

I get into my new Breads class, and I am sailing along (I thought) with a group of three other students; two best friends who were women in their mid 30s who were both former chemists from UC Davis, and a 28 year old guy with an M.A. in philosophy. I thought I died and gone to heaven…

…then one of the chemist chicks starts sleeping with the Breads chef. Turnes out he was a temp/CCA grad the school grabbed outta the Hotel W after the beloved Chef Malia was ousted in the CEC coup the week before I got there – but hey, the guy knew his stuff big time. He was kicking ass, but my background was mainly bread, so I was digging it and so was he — or so I thought…

After he and Miss Ph.D Snooty Poot stated coming/leaving class together, she starts getting all weird on me. Actually, she was a snobby bitch with a stick up her ass from the start Every other word outta her mouth was “I’m a Ph.D., and… yada, yada, yada…” — but hey; I can deal, ‘ya know?

When I hit town and she saw that I actually knew how to bake before I got there, it really burns her ass for some reason. Maybe it was because I had worked in actual bakeries, and she was a hobbiest on a tenured sabbatical. Remember, she and the rest of the class had been together for 3 classes before I got there, and she was used to being Queen Bee.

So when Philosophy Boy and I team up and start cranking out awesome shit on our own, she gets a bee in her bonnet.

Still, I was clueless until weeks into the next class (Plated Desserts), plus I hadn’t even bothered to check my grade, since I had 2 “A” grades going into Breads, and I assumed I had gotten another one…

Then I had to switch to a different class group for Plated Desserts because of my screwy schedule change-up, but this class group seemed pretty cool, and I was glad to be rid of Miss Snooty Poot — so I was stoked. Of course Miss Snoot was now the official girlfriend of Breads Chef, but I didn’t know that it would make any difference to me, until later…

I was getting kinda bored with just repeating the same textbook recipes over and over, since I could crank them out in my sleep, so when my turn came around to do the dessert for the cart at the Bistro Restaurant downstairs, I did my own riff. There was a Starbucks on the ground floor of the building, and I came up with a my version of their Mocha Valencia as a Mocha Pot de Creme with honey sweetened whipped cream and a sugar sprinkle flavored with orange oil…

Chef (who had been assiduously ignoring me for the first 2 weeks) got all hot under the collar when he saw me putting coffee paste in the pot de cream. Since we were about the same age, it never even occured to me that this guy would treat me like an idiot. Remember – I still thought I had aced breads, and I thought that perhaps my shining reputation had preceeded me, so when he started hovering all of a sudden, I just looked him in the eye and stage whispered “Don’t worry, I got ‘ya covered”. BIG mistake!

He pulled me out into the hall, and tore me a new one! He said “Just do what the textbook says to do…”. Still (clueless) I smile at him and say “Oh, OK chef – the last three chefs were kinda letting me do my own thing — since I’ve done alot of this stuff before — but if you want me to stick with the book, that’s cool. D’ya want me to make up another batch for tonight?”

He gets all red in the face and spews “There’s not enough time. Just finish it up and we’ll send it down anyway…”.

So I plate it all nice and purty in espresso cups, with a tuile spoons and chocolate cigarette straws, and Chef and I wheel it down to the Bistro…and the culinary crew in the kitchen there goes wild. They’re all gathered around like they’ve never seen a frigging fancy dessert before, and Bistro Chef is all smiles. I had made up a demo sample for them to use as a plating guide, and they all tasting it and oooh-ing and ahh-ing…I guess that the regulars in the Bistro were getting a little tired of the same 4 desserts night after night on the cart.

So time comes at the end of class to go home, and I go and ask Chef if I can take home the leftovers of my dessert, and he looks at me like I’m a turd and says “It sold out…”.

3 weeks later, I finish Plated Desserts with my tour de force: Chai Tea Panna Cotta, served with mini chocolate truffles flavored with the spices in chai; cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, and tea.

My new pals in the class and I are cross-tasting all of each other’s final projects, and everyone is telling me that mine is waaay cool. I take it up to Chef for him to taste and grade, and he says: “I TOLD you to just do stuff from the book!”. I say “…but the syllabus says that it’s was optional to do an original recipe for the final for extra credit…”, and Chef gets all red and says ” I told YOU to do the stuff IN THE BOOK!”.

So he tastes it all, and I ask “Is it ok?” and he says “It’s OK.”, and I take it home and my daughter and my roommate sit up ’til midnite eating it and saying how it’s the best thing I’ve brought home yet…

On Monday I get an email that says “You are on academic probation…”. I finally log in, and to my horror I see that I have a “D-” in Plated Desserts, a “D” in Breads. So I panic and call the Dean, and he says “That’s weird. You had all As, and now all of a sudden YOU have Ds? I’ll check into it…”.

I check again a day later, and Plated Desserts is a “B”, and there is a form letter message in my portal email box from PD Chef saying “Grade Change due to Clerical Error”, and an email taking me off probation, and like the stoopid pastry chef I am fast becoming, I believe it.

Then I call to see about having Dean talk to Breads Chef (who is still sleeping with Miss Snoot, but WTF should I care — WRONG!), and I start up the “Cost Control/Nutrition” class with the same chef who gave me an A in the very first class, and I’m a former VP at BofA, so I figure “Spread sheet and biz plan…PFFFT!”.

Then my 28 yr old daughter goes into labor 3 weeks early but hey — no worries — I’m done with my cheesecake catering biz plan project, and I’ve already read the whole nutrition textbook and aced the practice test, so I call from the maternity ward and say “Hey Chef Renee, My kid just had the baby! I’m a Grandma! (YIKES!). I’ll be in Friday to take the exam, and I’m Fed Ex-ing my biz plan – don’t worry, I got ‘ya covered…”.

Then I go and email a happy birth announcement to my whole CCA faculty and admin mailing list, including (…and this becomes a VERY important detail later, but how am I to know?…) a photo of my daughter in the hospital bed, with the new baby her arms, and me — leaning into the picture in my CCA school uniform smiling like I’m the happiest would-be almost chef in the world…

How was I to know…BIG MISTAKE!!!

Oh – I passed the state nutrition exam with a 98, but then I get an email “You are on academic probation, and you have failed a course…”. So I log in, and to my horror, I see that Breads is still a D, and now “Cost Control” is an “F”!

Why? More tomorrow…

How tough was the exam?

For Pastry 110 we were to make a jelly roll filled with pastry cream. The recipe we were using initially used way too much corn starch in the pastry cream and was coming out like silly putty, as written. The humidity was high that day and the instructors had decided they weren’t going to help us when it came to readjusting the corn starch (humidity screws with recipe formulas). Our instructor (from the Four Seasons, Hawaii) knew plenty about humidity (Hawaii’s got plenty of it).

To pass you had to nail the pastry cream consistency (after you figured out how humid the classroom was at the time you were cooking), nail the done-ness of the cake (no cracks), have no spaces in your roll between cake and cream), sauce and plate. I lost a few points from an “A” because some of my chocolate sauce actually hit the cake.

Judge among yourselves.

Only once did I see a truly useless student make it all the way through (and it was in the Management program, not the culinary or pastry programs).

Pastry 120 Final was a perfect Challah bread (your choice of 3, 4, 5, or 6 strand braid) and sour dough boule, and brioche.

130 – Several plated desserts from scratch and 3 original sauces. Had to prove you could correctly temper chocolate.

140 was Production Kitchen sized amounts of from-scratch puff pastry.

All this was timed by the way. If you didn’t make it on time you lost points, too.

Sorry, but I LEARNED something.

I wonder if CCA provides does anything like that. It’s pretty much standard practice for an accredited post-secondary school.

Here’s the scoop on the poop according the lawyer Ray, esq., and I gotta say that I find it morally repugnant on so many levels – which is made doubly ironic because I was arguably one of the loudest disgruntled CCA students while I was there (3/06 – 3/07).

His argument is so twisted that it defies logic. I’m not sure I can even put it down on paper…

Basically this Matt G. dude is his poster child for (he is claiming) the LARGE GROUP of CCA students who were SO stupid that the were successfully duped into Sallie Mae student loans by a scheming CCA with malice aforethought, and that they were given good grades, allowed to complete the program and graduate, were handed perfectly spellchecked professionally written resumes…

…but immediately upon graduation, the jobs they WERE offered (and which they apparently refused) did not pay a MINIMUM of $45,000 a year…

…because this same LARGE GROUP of CCA students (the law firm specializes in class action suits)were SO stupid that when the recruiter told them “…as much as $45,000 a year…”, all they and their just-as-stupid parents who co-signed the loan docs heard was “…$45,000 a year…”.

I found the follwing post (written by “ANON”)at: http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-06-06/news/burnt-chefs/full#comments

Note: If you wanna see something scary, check out some of the posts at the URL above…

To wit:

Should student(s) who are obviously not exactly “college material” be allowed to sue a COOKING SCHOOL for letting them in, because – or so they now claim – they were actually too stupid to know that they were too stupid be admitted, but NOT too stupid to loudly complain that they were actually too stupid to complete the program – even though they DID manage to complete it?

…and so now they are angry that they are being told by prospective employers that they are not talented enough to make “Big Bucks” – but (sadly) – they are actually too ignorant to know that they are not talented enough to deserve them?

Would they have been happier if the school had said to them: “Sorry, but we can see that it’s a pretty safe bet that YOU will never be Top Chef, The Next Food Network Star, or winner on Hell’s Kitchen, so just please pack your knives and go…or better yet – don’t even bother to come here at all”?

OR do they actually truly believe that the CCA should have known from the start that they were really stupid, and that the school should never even have issued them a suitcase full of sharp utensils in the first place…

… because they are – or at least they claim now – too ignorant/stupid to have known when they signed up for the CCA that less than 2 years of cooking school would not somehow magically “entitle” them to make more money than graduates of any other c-school, including City College?

*OR was the problem really that their “Chef Knife” was not sharp enough, and THAT is actually the REAL reason why they cannot get a job, and so they should get all the money back and go to City College, where the knives are better, or at least cheaper? Then would they be able to get a $45,000 year job?

…should THEY now be entitled to get all of their money back (after they already graduated) because they were actually too stupid to have finished at CCA, but they now want to go…umm…where? Some other cooking school that they ARE smart enough to learn enough from to get WHICH other job that they can’t get now?

DO ANY OF YOU ACTUALLY PERSONALLY KNOW ANY OTHER CULINARY SCHOOL GRADS WHO ACTUALLY MADE $45,000 A YEAR FROM THE MINUTE THEY GRADUATED FROM SCHOOL? ANY CULINARY SCHOOL? CITY COLLEGE? CIA?

Where exactly IS this other great cooking school that DOES actually guarantee that every single graduate will make the Big Bucks as soon as they graduate, and it’s actually TRUE!

I am dying to find out where this other school is that will entitle anyone who goes there to a one-way ticket to fabulous wealth in less than 2 years? I wanna go THERE!

PS: Some of you might have better luck with your job hunt if you get some help witt ur speling. It’s rilly hard tu git a guud job if yur rezoomay iz not ritten verry guud – evin fur a Sheff!!!
If yoo need help, there iz alsew a thing on your computr called “spelchek” that cood maybee help allott to ;-D

* One girl complains in her post that the chef’s knife in her school issued kit had the brand name “Chef Knife”, and therefore she should get her $200 fee back because she “could have bought a “better knife at Target for $8.99″.

I still have a scar where I almost cut my fucking finger off with that same school-issue chef’s knife in the 3rd week of class. I saw what they gave me for my $200 and said “Whoo-hoo!”. BTW: There is a shop across the street from the CCA that will buy school knives for cash. A BIG prob is students stealing other students kits so they can sell the knives…

She also moans that “the new uniforms don’t even have have my name embroidered on them…” WAHHHHHH!!!. $400 for my complete wardrobe for a full year? Worked for me…

PS: Heads up to all of you other Le Cordon Bleu/CEC grads out there. If this lawyer gets his way, it means that ALL of the LCB grads who got loans are legally JUST as stupid as CCA grads who did, since the curriculum is identical at every CEC/LCB school.

AND: Since the Le Cordon Bleu, Paris licensed the whole packaged curriculum, and it is virtually identical to the “real” LCB, you guys are now just as stupid too! Voila’!

What is the matter with you? Act your age!

Jennie: Hon, don’t worry. Sometimes when boys like you they don’t know how to show it, and so they hit you on the playground…

…No, mommy still doesn’t know why boys behave that way, but they always have, so I guess they always will…

Both of you!
Maybe if you watch this Norwegian safe sex video, it’ll calm you down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6ByjLScYcM

…don’t miss the ending.

http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/2810125/

I don’t know about the rest of you Career Education Corp/Le Cordon Bleu grads, but I am torn about how to proceed (see email from the new class action suit lawyer below):

OH! But don’t worry – despite my CEC/CCA “diploma” even I am not stoopid enuf to give a lawyer a list of all of the students names, etc., B’DUH!

What a conundrum: I cannot believe that I am defending the school, but if I join the suit I will help discredit the very diploma I just paid $$$ to get. Advice, anyone?

make of with this what you will…
__________________________________
From: rgallo@gallo-law.com
In a message dated 6/15/2007 7:31:47 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, writes:

Those who would have difficulty gaining admission to a community college and who, indeed, cannot do anything meaningful with the CCA education, are the most defrauded. Their admission falsely implied the utility of the education to them. They were led to take out high interest loans, by an institution with dramatic and undisclosed conflicts of interest, based on a false promise that the education would render them gainfully employed and able to service the debt.

***That said, my greatest interest as a businessman is the cleaner claims. A Class action based on lending practices is where the bigger justice and result are probably to be obtained.***

See if you can get me a list of your classmates. I’d like to interview every last one.

Ray

__________________

Ray E. Gallo
Gallo+Associates
5757 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
Ph: 310-338-1114
Fax: 310-338-1199
Cell: 310-200-8245

________________________________

Ray -

PLEASE: Consider your source (see comment “Matt G’ below):

Your Omega client; CCA poster boy Matt G.is an unfortunate oxymoron:

He is the perfect example of the new paradigm of the perfectly acceptable “C” average high school grad under “No Child Left Behind”.

…however, even Matt G. could get a job in a restaurant kitchen if he wanted to, despite the fact that he is weirdly and adamantly proud of what he considers to be his inalienable personal right to slack.

There is ALWAYS cooking work available (it ain’t rocket science) but not every single entry-level BAY AREA cooking job pays $45,000 to start. Does every post law school clerk job pay that around here either?

Stick with me here and try to grok this objectively: this is why the hapless Matt G. could sink your battleship:

IN RESTAURANT KITCHEN WORK, HARD WORKING AND STUPID IS ACTUALLY VERY HIGHLY PRIZED!

Vocational schools are historically the place for ummm…kids like Matt G. to (hopefully) become useful members of society. All of the Career Education Corp./Le Cordon Bleu (not THE “Le Cordon Bleu, Paris”, but rather the “CEC version of LCB”…) actually now do a stupendous job supplying the restaurant industry with hordes of these kinds of grads.

The CEC finally succeeded in crushing the very last vestiges of the of the formerly proud and independent CA.Culinary Academy in/or around 9/06. For my $$$ I wanted Stanford (and that IS what the old CCA was…). I got City College. That’s MY beef with it.

Umm…OK – think of “today’s typical military recruit”. That is the new universally acceptable minimum standard in a vocational culinary school, and that now (unfortanately)includes the “new” CEC/CCA.

Several of the faculty confided in me that they felt the BIG prob was that there was a sudden inexplicable surge – just in the last 2-3 years, of grads of our CA. high school system who had this very weird mind-set; e.g. “yoor nu clyent” Matt G…

My mother is a former faculty member of a CEC-owned NYC “computer I.T. school” – You know; the kind that turns out a “certified IT grad” in less than 2 years. The grads are for the most part, on par with the Tech Support person you get on the phone when you call for help with your software…

She said to me: “Remember; these are not a “college track” students as we understood them. These are “vocational track” students under the new “Everybody is SOMEBODY!” model. Now they now call a “vocational school” a “college” in order that these students “self-esteem” not be damaged…”

BUT: Let me play devil’s advocate here:

Amongst your own classmates, were there “stars”. “egg heads”, “ok students”, and “slackers? Can every single grad of every single law school be guaranteed say, $50,000 year income immediately upon graduation simply because the managed to show up, complete the assignments adequately, but they are, and will never be the sharpest tool in the shed?

Should every grad of every law school be prepared to SUE their school if they are not offered jobs which THEY feel is good enough for them (even if they are misguided as to their own brilliance, or lack thereof?) Is there some immutable law which says that simply passing the bar exam ENTITLES the passer to a job paying more than $___, no matter how well/poorly they perform?

Might the well meaning, but not brilliant passers of the bar still find gainful employment within their own limitations, but perhaps eventually accept that they will never be the sort of lawyer who is going to make Big Bucks? Are there occasional exceptions who’s own marginal competence is actually rewarded ( the legal equivalent of say, Rachael Ray)?

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink…
…if thet horrs sens a rezoomay thet luuks liik thiss, will he get an interview?

One of my biggest battles with the CCA was getting them to WAIVE their requirement that I have the job placement guy help me with a resume, because I did not want job placement assistance. I always intended to be self-employed.

Every single graduate (except me) walked out of there with a lovely clean spellchecked resume. If the kid lost it at the bar after school, that same resume is permanently posted on the school’s internet portal…

IF the trend continues, the time may come when the employers who were formerly more than happy to take any Le Cordon Bleu/CCA grad will no longer accept the schools’ minimum grad standard as more than adequate for their purposes…
OR:(more likely scenario)the CEC has picked up on the sad fact that in part due to their efforts, minimum industry standards are dropping fast – and they are all to happy to give the market what it demands:
However, the truth remains: A gainfully employed “chef” DOES NOT NEED TO BE the intellectual or educational equvalent of (even a)lawyer, social worker, or a CA. public school teacher, because:

***IN RESTAURANT KITCHEN WORK, HARD WORKING AND STUPID IS ACTUALLY VERY HIGHLY PRIZED!

If Matt G. does manage to get through any other vocational school program, including the SF City College program, will he be any better off?

(BTW: City College uses the same curriculum the “new CCA” now uses. It’s a canned franchised curriculum which is identical to all of the other CEC/Le Cordon Bleu schools. If Matt gets it again, will he be any smarter?)

…and unfortunately, stupid, arrogant and lazy is fast becoming the acceptable minimum industry standard – in part as a result of the evil “Blackwater” of vocational education; the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Career Education Corporation, and it’s corporate tactics with literally hundreds of formerly good independent vocational schools like the CCA (and other “Le Cordon Bleu” schools)….

Your boy Matt G. must be working real hard NOT to get a restaurant kitchen job…

- S.

PS:Have you read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain? It does give some perspective on the minimum industry standard for kitchen help in NYC – and the Bay Area is even less competitive than that.

Have you watched the awful Hells Kitchen on Fox? THOSE are the shining examples “the new paradigm” in vocational culinary school grads. In fact, according to Fox, those are the best and the brightest!
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[Comment by Matt G — June 13, 2007 @ 03:40AM]:
The school can never give me the two years of my life back, but Im going to sue them in hopes of getting my student loans paid off, so I can go back to chool. The non transferable AA is useless, and they can keep it.

Anyone who wants to join me in the law suite, let me know.

I have seen some terrible things. We had a partially retarded kid in our class, who would steal everything, and when he was caught didn’t understand what was going on. We also had this nice little girl who had only one leg. She was so nice, and it sadens me to think how she must be getting treated now, considering how hard it is for me to get a job.

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