Le Cordon Bleu students.JPG

In this 2006 file photo, students and faculty members of Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in downtown Portland (then known as Western Culinary Institute) prepare cookies as part of an Oregonian Christmas cookie contest. Career Education Corp., which operates the school, has announced the pending closure of all 16 Le Cordon Bleu institutes in the United States.

(Oregonian/OregonLive file photo)

Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts will close its 16 U.S. cooking schools in 2017, including its campus in downtown Portland.

Career Education Corp., which owns and operates the schools, announced Wednesday that it would phase out the culinary programs by September 2017. New enrollments won't be accepted after classes begin in January, though new students will be able to complete their training.

The company said it decided to close the schools in the wake of recent federal regulations limiting federal funding to for-profit schools. One new rule limits student loan payments to 20 percent of a graduate's after-tax wages.

"New federal regulations make it difficult to project the future for career schools that have higher operating costs, such as culinary schools that require expensive commercial kitchens and ongoing food costs," President and Chief Executive Todd Nelson said in a statement to The Los Angeles Times.

According to a spokesman for Le Cordon Bleu, the Portland school had 442 students enrolled in 2014. The Department of Education reports that the average tuition and fees were $13,361 per year.

The cooking school has a long Portland history. It originally opened in 1983 as the Horst Mager Culinary Institute, named after the Portland chef and restaurateur who co-founded the school. In 1986, the name changed to Western Culinary Institute, and the school became affiliated with Le Cordon Bleu in 1999. The school moved to its current location inside downtown's Galleria Building in 2003, and officially changed its name to Le Cordon Bleu in 2010.

Over the years, the school has produced chefs who have gone on to acclaim in the kitchen, including Matt Lightner, who cooked at Southeast Portland's acclaimed Castagna before heading to New York City in 2012, and the late Homaro Cantu, who became known for molecular gastronomy at the Chicago's Moto Restaurant.

Vitaly Paley, the James Beard Award-winning chef, said he's hired plenty of students from Le Cordon Bleu and Western Culinary Institute over the years, including Ben Bettinger, who was one of his original chefs at Paley's Place, and went on to open Laurelhurst Market.

"There's been a steady flow of students from this program over the years," Paley said. "It's pretty sad that a school that's turned out some of the better talent that we enjoy in Portland is closing. I don't like to see any school closing because their business can't be sustained."

One of Paley's chefs with ties to Le Cordon Bleu is Doug Adams, the chef at Paley's Imperial who gained national attention competing on TV's "Top Chef" earlier this year. Adams attended the school for a few months before dropping out because he was concerned about acquiring more student debt, and thought getting hands-on experience in restaurants might be a better education.

"I don't really know how I feel, to be honest," Adams said. "I just took such a different path. I know culinary school is really helpful for a lot of people."

Adams said going into deep debt for a degree was one of the big problems with culinary education.

"It's super tough to get into debt to get into an industry where you're going to be making minimum wage or a little higher," Adams said. "It's a rough spot to be in especially when you're being told it's going to be different."

The school has faced criticism over high tuition in the past, including a 2008 class-action lawsuit alleging that Career Education Corp. engaged in fraud and unfair business practices by overstating the value of its culinary education and providing misleading job-placement rates. In that lawsuit, one plaintiff alleged that 70 percent of the school's graduates earned less than $22,500 a year, making it difficult to pay off student loans.

Portland restaurateur Bruce Carey said he wasn't surprised by the news about Le Cordon Bleu's pending closure.

"The economics just don't work for the graduate," he said. "A culinary degree is expensive and even with a high demand for good, experienced cooks in the Portland job market, the starting wage won't pay for the student loans that are typically so burdensome after graduation."

Carey said that while a culinary degree could be helpful, it didn't trump experience in a professional kitchen.

"We hire kitchen staff based on their general attitude toward cooking and the work involved," Carey said. "A degree from a reputable culinary program is treated the same as experience working in a reputable restaurant kitchen. Drive and a professional approach to your work is of greater importance."

The closure won't affect Le Cordon Bleu schools overseas, including the original Paris institute, which opened in 1895, and is famous for teaching French cooking to Julia Child in the late 1940s.

And Le Cordon Bleu's closure won't end culinary education in Portland. The Art Institutes of Portland runs a Culinary Arts program, and the Oregon Culinary Institute has a strong roster of classes and instructors.

-- Reporter Samantha Bakall contributed to this report.

-- Grant Butler

503-221-8566; @grantbutler