Does a Culinary Degree Help Someone Who Wants to be a Chef?
It's an age-old question: If you want to enter a field like culinary arts, do you head straight for on-the-job training, or do you get some schooling first? In the culinary world, you could do either, technically. But you have to be sure of your reasons and know what you hope to get out of your choice. For people who decide they want a technical knowledge base and connections before they try to make it in the real world of food, culinary school is the smartest option.
What Counts as Culinary Arts Education?
What do you learn in culinary arts? Obviously, you learn basic and advanced cooking techniques. You also learn about at least rudimentary food science, such as why browning butter has the effect it has or why certain cooking oils are better in different applications. You learn specialties like pastry arts and non-cooking knowledge like budgeting and menu creation, as well as sourcing supplies. In other words, you get a well-rounded introduction to almost the entire culinary-related world, and this gives you a marvelous jumping-off point to decide which way to go after you finish school.
Granted, you could learn all this on your own while working in a restaurant, but you'd encounter three obstacles. One is you'd be very, very tired after a day on the job; would you really want to spend your free time studying a culinary issue that might not apply to where you're working, or would you rather rest?
How Much is On-The-Job Training Worth?
The second is that your on-the-job training could be teaching you some bad or inefficient habits. They may seem to work for you because you're used to using them, but you could save valuable time or make your work time safer by using proper techniques. You'd learn those proper techniques in culinary school, but you might never know about them if you simply work in one restaurant. By the way, those inefficient habits can make it harder for you to adjust to new work situations if you change jobs.
The third is that, when you go straight to work in a restaurant, you could miss out on learning about different parts of the field because you just don't know they exist. Maybe you know right now that somehow schools create cafeteria menus, but you might not actually know how regulated those menus are (states set regulations for nutrition that public schools have to follow). Or, maybe you didn't know that food companies and state food commissions have their own recipe creators. That could be more along the lines of what you'd like to do, but you'll never know if you don't find out about the option in the first place.
Culinary Arts Education Could Give you a Broad Base of Knowledge
When you get your culinary education through work only, you get a narrow experience unless you purposefully seek out additional information. When you get your culinary education through formal schooling, you get an introduction to the whole field. This not only gives you the technical skills to hit the ground running when you do go to work (and externships through these schools certainly help), but it gives you more options for your eventual work direction.
Formal education also could give you a safe space to mess up. If you're a student, you're expected to have some spectacular food failures. You can't really do that in a working kitchen in a restaurant that needs to serve customers.
Are you interested in a culinary arts career? If you want to earn an Associate of Applied Science Degree in Culinary Arts, ECPI University's Culinary Institute of Virginia offers this program at an accelerated pace. For more information, connect today with a friendly admissions advisor.
It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!
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Gainful Employment Information – Culinary Arts - Associate’s
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