There was a class action against this school but they did not include students that attended before 2003. I completed my course around 1994. I feel like they should include ALL of the students that were scammed from this school.
Here is a summary from the class action that was completed a few years ago:
A class action lawsuit settlement has been reached with San Francisco’s California Culinary Academy, a subsidiary of Career Education Corp., over allegations that the Academy misrepresented its job placement rate.
A group of angry California Culinary Academy students filed the class action lawsuit, claiming the school misrepresented its 98 percent job placement rate, exaggerated its prestige in the industry, and suggested that it had a selective qualifying process.
“This rate is a lie,” the CCA class action lawsuit states. “The placement statistics include non-professional entry level jobs like prep cooks, $8-$12 an hour line cooks and Starbucks baristas. That culinary degree was not a pre-requisite or even relevant for many of the included jobs.”
If class members had known the truth, they say, they never would have paid the nearly $46,000 tuition at CCA.
San Francisco’s California Culinary Academy offered to settle the class action lawsuit by offering $40 million to help fund rebates to students who attended CCA from 2003 through 2008. The CCA settlement will reportedly pay each of the 8,500 students who attended during that time rebates of up to $20,000 each – about half of the tuition they paid. Tuition prices are typically $46,000 for a 12-month program and an additional three months of on-the-job training. Also part of the CCA class action lawsuit settlement is an agreement by Career Education Corp., the parent company of CCA, to eat $1.8 million in student debt.
The eligible CCA students were notified last month of the pending class action lawsuit settlement. They must register at the Settlement Administrator’s website at www.CCAClassCounsel.com to either take the money offered by the settlement or opt out and pursue better recovery. A hearing to approve the CCA class action settlement is scheduled for August 22.