Along with two-year associate's and four-year bachelor's degrees, culinary-arts school of art Institute in Denver offers a one-year cooking program for older students who already have degrees in other disciplines or who want to enter industry quickly.

Whats most discouraging is that career changers may be naive about what it takes to become a professional chef, and therefore most do not fare well in their courses.

Most people get into culinary because of glamor. You have to be organized, think on your feet and have a certain temperament for it. There is stress, heat, hot oils, boiling water, sharp knives. You have to be organized and focused and have a real passion for it. Cooking in a restaurant is very different from cooking at home.

Although a culinary professional may possess detailed knowledge of raw materials, he or she would not necessarily know how, for example, to keep ingredients from lumping in commercial food packages. Traditionally, they are fortunate to be creating food that is eaten much sooner after preparation than a grocery product will be. In a restaurant, chef is not usually required to consider food packaging, storage, and reheating in same manner as would be encountered in a manufactured food.