Fly by night degree mills I can understand, but a community college, which I presume is accredited, is offering a CULINARY SCHOOL?!?!
"Culinary arts provides more than slicing and dicing?" Yeah, like try a ton of debt, no employable skills, no job offers (just ask previous years' graduates) and increased taxes to the sucker taxpayers of Virginia. Trust me kids, I KNOW, I TAUGHT AT ONE OF THOSE CULINARY SCHOOLS. GET THE HELL OUT NOW KIDS! YOU'RE BEING TAKEN LIKE CHUMPS!
Wincing, I clicked on their little "My Future at VCCS" and amongst the expected mushy, sappy, touchy-feely garbage is a video you just have to watch. Wonderful happy music, with pretty birds and smileys and unicorns, but nothing about the shocking state of the labor market for young people or anything that would help them practically.
Would somebody over at Virginia Community College please get the funding to buy 10,000 copies of my books to distribute to those poor kids? Or how about some of these conservative institutions? You know how the government buys billions of dollars in vaccinations against malaria, AID's, or whatever else to use in Africa or wherever else? How about the private sector counterpart buy 10 million copies of my book and ship them to all the students in all of the colleges in the US? Not only would it vaccinate these poor kids from destroying their futures, it's an incredible return on investment! Imagine instead of millions of idiotic, brainwashed kids voting for socialism, they're woken up and they start voting for capitalism, lowering corporate tax rates, eliminating regulation. Somebody tell the Koch Foundation, or Peter Thiel, or heck any corporation's CSR department. Ug, how the heck do you fight this sickness!?
On the surface it seems as though this is a restaurant kitchen skills diploma, which seems like a reasonable sort of job training program. It's a non-trivial skill set. Is the problem that this particular job market is moribund in the state of Virginia?
ReplyDeleteAt least the cost isn't too bad. A full course load is $1642.50 per semester.
ReplyDeleteWell, it says "A better FU" right at the top of the page there. Can't say they weren't warned.
ReplyDeleteAimeriez-vous des frites avec ça?
ReplyDeleteAh yes, in Virginia it is old school done new. A better class of underclass!
A little style, a little presentation, and just a biiiiity bit of snobby...voila! Pommes Frites served by happy little hobbits for the bigs.
Plus the money flowing into the educromplex can't be beat. I love this state, I really do, but offerings like that make me weep. I wonder how they would offer that online? That is one of the biggest pushes coming in the old dominion...get 'er online.
On one hand, teaching women to cook is justifiable as a public good.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, giving them a degree for it is just asking for high and mighty trouble when their pate de fois gras tastes like plate of foul grass.
My instincts are that it's basically a wash, but reasonable people may disagree.
I don't have much experience with degree mills, but isn't some training as a chef preparation for a semi-decent job? Don't good cooks get paid decent wages? Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't it a hell of a lot better than womynzzz studies?
ReplyDeleteTo daniel_ream
ReplyDeleteMy take on the problem is that(in Virginia anyways) restaurant work is minimum wage work. Why spend thousands to get a degree for that? It is promoted as a way up and out, earn your degree and get made! When they do get the degree and realize it isnt worth squat?
Plus if you are getting a pell grant, that is taxpayer money. Education and all the grants that go with it have been touted as an "investment" in the future. How is spending thousands of other peoples money on degrees that wind up worthless and crush people an investment?
To get the basics and then transfer to a 4 year in something real is an investment. Anything else is more like a rigged game that transfers money.
If they are actually training people how to run restaurants, that's not a bad thing. There is an enormous restaurant, bar & hotel economy in the D.C. area, plus a lot of resorts in the region and you're not far from Philly, Richmond, and the Outer Banks. If you've ever worked in a restaurant or bar, you know that it's about business management. So learning when to add the saffron is nice, but learning how to logistically manage a big kitchen is a big deal. If they're learning actual kitchen/restaurant management it at the cost of about $7k for a two year degree, that's really really good bang for the buck, particularly compared to the full freight degrees from CIA and other culinary institutes, and the high priced Foodie Degrees.
ReplyDeleteOf course if they're just teaching them how to julienne vegetables or when to add the saffron then yeah, it's a waste of time.