NY Times: ‘Top Chef’ Dreams Crushed by Student Loan Debt

[kleenex]

‘Top Chef’ Dreams Crushed by Student Loan Debt - New York Times

From article:

But would-be top chefs face a challenge that most lawyers, engineers or nurses do not: few jobs in their chosen field pay enough for them to retire their student loans. As a result, as many as 11 percent of graduates at some culinary schools are defaulting on federal student loans. The national average for all students last year was roughly half that, at 5.1 percent.

Although the restaurant industry is expected to create two million new jobs in the next decade, the Department of Labor reports that in 2005, the latest year for which data were available, the average hourly wage for a restaurant cook was $9.86.

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This is not good at all.