Last week, the New York Times, ran a higher education-focused section of Education Life. Contained within that package was an article on continuing education for people attending culinary school. In general, I’ve always lumped culinary and journalism school into the same category of paying a lot of money for a degree in something that’s best learned through workplace experience. But I’ll admit, the article makes a convincing case that culinary school also prepares would-be chefs for the business side of their profession by dealing with how to handle marketing, accounting, and management.

While better combining culinary education and business practices makes a great deal of sense, it’s worth remembering that these schools are not cheap—complete annual costs at the Culinary Institute of America can easily exceed $30,000 a year. Given that the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the mean annul wage for a cook is $22,750 and $42,410 for a chef or head cook, the amount of debt for a multi-year program may be too much for students.

But looking at the cohort default rates suggest that culinary school students have a better repayment record than people enrolled at other for-profit institutions. Because the U.S. Department of Education does not break out default rates by program, only the 14 institutions that identify themselves explicitly as a culinary or cooking school were included. Other places with large culinary programs, such as Johnson and Wales University, were excluded because they also have other offerings in business and education.  The only exception is Walnut Hill College, which is a restaurant school and is included.

Comparing the institutional cohort default rate versus the average rate in the school’s sector shows that each of the 15 institutions considered had a smaller percentage of its students fail to pay back their loans than its peers.

What’s especially interesting about these figures is that the for-profit two-year or less than two-year institutions had the largest disparity between their default rate and the sector average. For an institution like the California Institute of School of Culinary Arts, which had over 1,100 students in its cohort, keeping its default rate down means that it’s keeping over 100 more students out of default than similar colleges or universities.

In fact, over the past three cohorts of borrowers, there have only been four instances in which a culinary institute had a higher default rate than its sector. Only one of those instances—Walnut Hill College’s 2006 differential of 1.6 percentage points—was the difference more than 1 percentage point above the sector average.

Though culinary school default rates are generally below the sector average, in some cases the gap is shrinking. From the 2006 to the 2007 cohort, five culinary institutes had percentage point increases in their default rate that were larger than the sector average. At some of them this means substantial yearly increases. In 2005, 3.0 percent of borrowers from the French Culinary Institute defaulted on their loans. In 2007, with a larger cohort, it had a default rate of 8.3 percent. The New England Culinary Institute, meanwhile, has seen its cohort default rate nearly triple, going from 3.4 percent in 2005 to 9.7 percent in 2007.

Judging the merit of culinary school debt is further complicated by the fact that there’s an entire part of the debt data that is unknown–private student loan borrowing. According to College-Insight.org, graduates from the Culinary Institute of America leave with an average debt load of $29,351, but only $11,733 of that is in federal loans.  Thus, even if students are paying back their federal loans, there’s no way of knowing how they are doing on their private ones. This is even more pronounced at other chains that do not even participate in the federal loan programs–such as Le Cordon Bleu. How well their borrowers do in terms of repayment is a black box.

Looking at only financial information, however,  fails to answer a more salient question–is the degree necessary in the first place? Being a lawyer almost always requires credentialing, but being a chef does not. Even though the predominance of culinary school training among elite chefs suggests that a formal education may matter, one still has no way of knowing if it’s important for the knowledge/skills learned (like med school) or more for the connections made (business school). There’s no good data available to answer these questions, though they do provide an interesting thought exercise.

For many people, culinary school presents either a lifelong dream or a chance at a second career. Federal data suggest that this might be a better option than similar types of for-profit institutions.* Without a better picture of all their borrowing though, it’s hard to know for sure whether stepping into the kitchen (or the restaurant) is a worthwhile move.

*The data is not robust enough to separate out demographics or other student characteristics, so it’s really hard to make more than a highly qualified statement.