Earn an Associate’s Degree in Culinary Arts

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You might be wondering what benefits, if any, are offered by earning an Associate’s degree in Culinary Arts rather than just jumping in and learning on the job. After all, if you take a job as a cook, you can earn money and learn how to cook in a professional kitchen at the same time without the extra time and expense of a culinary arts education. Let’s take a closer look at some important culinary arts information to help you see the benefits of earning an associate’s degree in culinary arts.

Your Earning Potential is Greatly Increased

Probably the most obvious difference between someone who “learns on the job” and someone who has earned an associate’s degree in culinary arts is the higher earning potential for the degree holder. Employers will nearly always give higher salaries to chefs (someone who has earned a degree in culinary arts) than to cooks (someone who has learned on the job and lacks formal culinary training). Let’s look at some hard numbers to give you an idea of the difference in salary, the more culinary arts information you have, the better choices you can make.

If you are a line cook (typically someone who has “learned on the job”) will earn between $10 and $12 per hour. This comes out to between $20,800 and $24,960 per year—assuming you never take a vacation and work 40 hours per week. It’s worth noting that many line cooks don’t get 40 hours per week and end up earning a bit less.

On the other hand, chefs (people who went to culinary school and have earned an associate’s degree in culinary arts) have a median annual wage of $46,620, which works out to $22.42 per hour. The top 10% of chefs earn more than $74,240 per year. Line cooks top out at the lowest entry level pay for chefs. By taking the learn on the job route, you severely limit your earning potential—you will typically earn more during your first year as a chef than you would after five years as a line cook.

Your Career Advancement Opportunities are Expanded

The second bit of culinary arts information you need to understand to help you see the benefits of earning an associate’s degree is your career advancement. If you start your career on the line as a cook and you learn everything there is to learn about cooking on the line, you will likely spend your entire career on the line. If you have any visions of being in charge of the kitchen, managing the kitchen staff, or helping create new menu items; you might be sorely disappointed without a culinary arts education.

Taking on the responsibility to manage the kitchen and create new menu items may well be within your grasp to learn on the job, the same way you learned how to cook. The problem is few employers will trust those duties to someone without a formal culinary arts education.

We’ve laid out a couple benefits to earning an associate’s degree in culinary arts. The next step for you is to head over to your local culinary school or community college and get more information on their culinary arts degree programs.