It’s the end of an era: Le Cordon Bleu culinary schools across the United States are set to close due to government regulations regarding career colleges.
Starting January 4th, 2016, Le Cordon Bleu will stop enrollment. Only current students will be allowed to enroll in classes to finish their degrees. Eater notes that although the American locations will be shutting down, this announcement will not affect the campus’ in international locations.
Career Education Corporation, the for-profit company behind Le Cordon Bleu, originally hoped to sell off the culinary schools. Instead, the corporation has picked the cheaper option of simply shutting down the domestic campuses.
The school rose to fame after culinary god and cookbook author Julia Child attended a Le Cordon Bleu campus in Paris back in the 1950s. In the United States, it offers cooking classes and government-subsidized associates degrees in hospitality and management.
According to BuzzFeed, Le Cordon Bleu’s trade degrees “were threatened by the Obama administration’s gainful employment rule, which cuts off federal financial aid to schools where graduates borrow money at high rates to pay for school but earn little after graduation.”
There are still plenty of options of aspiring culinary professionals in the U.S., including the Culinary Institute of America, New England Culinary Institute, and Institute of Culinary Education. And Career Education Corporation isn’t disappearing entirely from the scened; instead, the company plans to shift its focus to online education.
Of course, they could also take the advice of anti-culinary school advocates like Prune’s Gabrielle Hamilton:
[via BuzzFeed]