Career Education to wind down Le Cordon Bleu operations

A culinary student holds up the guts of a fish during a butchery class at the Le Cordon Bleu program at California Culinary Academy in 2008.

Lachlan Sands, president of the Pasadena Le Cordon Bleu and a graduate himself, said by phone this morning that right now, “I’m just talking to students and making sure they’re taken care of”.

Le Cordon Bleu announced it’s closing all 16 of its cooking schools in the U.S. Wednesday, including the campus in Orlando, and indicated new federal regulations are impacting career colleges. Le Cordon Bleu enrolled 256 MA students, of which 29 are military veterans. It’s a polarizing conversation with fierce proponents on either side, but today’s announcement that Le Cordon Bleu will be ceasing its operations by the end of 2017 seems telling.

Internationally, Le Cordon Bleu is the world’s largest cooking and hospitality school, perhaps best known for its Paris flagship location, where Julia Child was a student.

Students who are now enrolled at the U.S. Cordon Bleu will have to finish their education by September 2017, when the campuses will be closed for good.

Past year the company announced it was looking to sell off its US campuses, but was unable to reach an agreement with a potential buyer.

Tuition fees cost up to $42,500 and, according to the New York Daily News, students complained about being misled by the school on job prospects after graduating.

“New federal regulations make it hard to project the future for career schools that have higher operating costs, such as culinary schools that require expensive commercial kitchens and ongoing food costs”.

In fact, back in 2013 the Career Education Corporation had to settle a $40 million lawsuit filed by grads who claimed that although they had been promised bright careers, they were instead earning $12 per hour working as bartenders or line cooks.

The Le Cordon Bleu division lost $43.6 million during the first three quarters of 2015 and $66.6 million in 2014.