Le Cordon Bleu Shuts Down U.S. Operations

The Le Cordon Bleu Campus, Las Vegas

This January, the last class of students will enter Le Cordon Bleu, the popular culinary school with 16 locations around the United States. The for-profit school falls under the purview of the Obama Administration’s gainful employment rule, which cuts off federal funding from any school where graduates borrow money at high rates to pay for school but earn little after graduation. Many such institutions have recently come under fire for their predatory enrollment practices and misleading promises about job placement. Le Cordon Bleu in particular was the subject of a 2013 class action lawsuit alleging that the school oversold the benefits of their degree. They settled out of court for $40 million dollars.

Le Cordon Bleu is best known for it’s flagship location in Paris and famous alumna Julia Child, but branches in the U.S. are run by the Career Education Corporation and act largely independently from the original. The Career Education Corp. had previously announced that they would sell off the culinary school, but eventually decided it would be more cost effective to shut them down entirely and focus entirely on online schools instead.

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