Le Cordon Bleu in Portland, Oregon, is to its former students what a picture in a fancy recipe book is to the person cooking the meal: not quite it.
The now-defunct culinary school must pay back 44% of its former students’ tuition following the settlement of a decade-long legal battle against the school, which advertised itself as highly selective and prestigious, but in reality offered low-quality materials and provided training that only qualified graduates for entry-level, low-paid positions, Portland’s KGW8 news reported Monday.
"I'm a shift supervisor for Round Table Pizza, and for a year and a half I was at Subway managing over there," Carrie Rios, a 2008 graduate, told the station. It's a far cry from her dream of owning her own restaurant or being a chef, promises made when she applied for $40,000 in loans to pay for her schooling, she said.
The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of 2,200 students at the for-profit cooking school and its parent company, Career Education Corporation, alleging the parent company encouraged students to take out predatory loans because it had a secret deal with loan company Sallie Mae to overcharge students by 44%, the news station reported.
Le Cordon Bleu closed all of its 17 campuses nationwide in 2017, the station reported.
Think your travel insurance will cover that drunken tumble on the dance floor while on vacation? Think again, according to an article posted Tuesday on BBC News’ website.