Education, evolution and eating: CIA celebrates 70 years

Bakery and pastry arts professor Peter Greweling oversees work by student Mary True during a chocolate-making class at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. File photograph by Bob Rozycki.

Experiential learning is becoming an increasingly popular trend in higher education. But for The Culinary Institute of America, emphasizing learning through firsthand experience is nothing new.

“Most schools have five, 10 percent experiential learning, and they think that”™s as good as you can get,” said Michael Sperling, CIA”™s vice president of academic affairs. “For us, it”™s 50, 60.”

“We”™ve been doing that all along,” he added. “It”™s essential.”

One such hands-on initiative is its Intrapreneurship Concentration, which gives students the opportunity to pitch, develop and run their own restaurant or food service concept in the CIA”™s Student Commons for a full semester. Winning concepts have included Leyenda, a quick-service Mexican restaurant, and Meatball City, a dining option centered on beef, chicken or vegetable meatballs.

The not-for-profit institution has grown exponentially since its inception. Opened as the Connecticut-based New Haven Restaurant Institute in 1946 prior to relocating to Hyde Park in 1972, the CIA was founded as a way to train returning World War II veterans in the culinary arts. The first and only of its kind at the time, the CIA”™s initial class included 50 students, with a faculty consisting of a chef, baker and dietitian.

Having celebrated its 70th anniversary in May, fittingly with a student-made cake, the college today offers both associate and bachelor”™s degrees to its roughly 3,000 students across its four campuses in Hyde Park, California, Texas and Singapore. The school is also set to open another location, The Culinary Institute of America at Copia, in downtown Napa, Calif., later this fall.

After 70 years in the business, Sperling said the “trend lines are still strong” in the culinary education industry. Following what had been a “huge growth” over the past few decades, he said the inflation in the number of culinary schools has leveled off in recent years.

“I don”™t know that there”™s more growth right now,” Sperling said. “If anything, there”™s more consolidation.”

For-profit schools in particular have been hit hard in part due to the government”™s crackdown on the sector. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that after reaching a peak in 2010, enrollment at private for-profit institutions fell by 26 percent from 2010 to 2014. In December, for-profit company Career Education Corp. announced that it would be closing all 16 of its Le Cordon Bleu cooking schools in the U.S. Still, there are other schools with culinary education curriculums today, including programs at Johnson & Wales University and many community colleges.

Sperling said that even though the job market in the food service industry is getting “tighter and tighter,” roughly 89 percent of CIA”™s bachelor”™s degree recipients are able to find jobs following graduation.

CIA has also seen growth in its number of “traditional-aged students.” While the split between traditional and nontraditional students was roughly half-and-half two decades ago, around 60 percent of today”™s CIA students attend the school directly following their high school graduation. Sperling attributes this to the “continuing professionalization” of the culinary field.

“This trend also dovetails with the growth over the past 20 years of our bachelor”™s degree programs, which also tend to attract more traditional-aged students,” he said.

About 75 percent of students enrolled at the CIA are working toward an associate degree, though Sperling said the number of bachelor”™s degree students continues to rise. The college offers bachelor”™s programs in culinary arts management, baking and pastry arts management, applied food studies and culinary science.

But the CIA is not just focused on teaching the next Emeril or Gordon Ramsay. The college also operates The Food Business School, a branch focused on food entrepreneurship and the business side of the industry. Sperling said the school is also in the midst of a refreshment of its management curriculum.

“A lot of students want to go into food policy, public policy, food media,” he said, adding that as the food service industry has evolved, so has culinary education. As consumers become more conscious of issues surrounding their food, those focuses have translated into the education sector.

“We”™ve ramped that up in a big way,” he said.

Along with a new dining facility, The Egg, which offers a variety of healthy food options, the CIA has also partnered with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health to launch Menus of Change, an initiative that examines issues such as obesity, health care costs, sourcing and production of food.

“Cooking is the foundation,” Sperling said, but on top of that, “we offer students a whole range of options that reflect the breadth of the food world.”