HAVERHILL, Mass. — The students all wore white chef coats, houndstooth pants and short toques as they tasted their lamb tagines for salt. Floor-to-ceiling windows in the sleek kitchen framed a sweeping view of the Merrimack River.
Here, north of Boston in the culinary school at Northern Essex Community College, the students will learn about sous-vide cooking, use pastry sheeters to laminate dough, break down whole pigs and try molecular gastronomy techniques. The job placement rate after graduation is 100 percent.
“Probably even more,” said Denis Boucher, the coordinator of the culinary program. “There could be two or three jobs per student around here.”
The price of that education: about $6,500 for a certificate and $14,000 for an associate degree — or less, as many culinary students receive grants or scholarships. Compare that with the Culinary Institute of America, the acclaimed private school where a single semester at its Hyde Park, N.Y., campus costs nearly $20,000.
Less than a decade ago, the number of culinary schools in the United States was rising rapidly. But the last few years have been challenging.
At Northern Essex, culinary students work in new kitchens that were built with the support of the state and a local developer.Credit…Kieran Kesner for The New York Times
Confronted with increasingly steep operating costs and a pandemic that hamstrung the restaurant business, several schools have permanently closed campuses, including the New England Culinary Institute and the International Culinary Center (which licensed its curriculum to the Institute of Culinary Education). Johnson & Wales University, which has a well-known culinary program, closed two campuses in 2020. Even before the arrival of Covid-19,
