The California Culinary Academy is a for-profit school, and an affiliate of Le Cordon Bleu. It is located in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1977, the academy has trained more than 15,000 people for restaurant careers through its 30-week baking and pastry chef program and 16-month culinary arts degree program. It was purchased by Career Education Corporation in 1999.HistoryThe school was established in 1977.In mid-2007 the San Francisco Weekly claimed that the school preyed on students, misrepresenting the jobs and wages that were available to graduates, and the ability of graduates to service their student loan obligations after graduation. Soon thereafter, a class action lawsuit (Amador v. California Culinary Academy) was filed. One allegation was that the school inflated job placement rates by counting as successful post-culinary school placements jobs that would have been available without going to culinary school at all. The complaint in its various iterations, with detailed allegations, is available from the San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. CGC-07-467710.Later individual cases filed in 2011 (still ongoing as of September 2012), e.g., Abarca v. California Culinary Academy Case Number: CGC-11-511469, alleged the same problems. These suits cited data tending to provide substantial support for the allegation that CCA led students to believe they would be chefs after graduation when, the complaint alleges, graduates start in entry level jobs available to those without culinary degrees, making culinary school an economically irrational purchase. In December 2010 CCA owner Career Education Corporation ("CEC") agreed to settle the class action for $40 million plus about $1.7 million in forgiveness of amounts alleged owed to the school or CEC. That settlement received final approval from the San Francisco Superior Court on or about April 19, 2012, and that approval became the final judgement of the court in late June 2012.
