"Every time I write that $400 check to pay back my loans, I kick myself," says Marco Saurez, executive chef at Bon Savor in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. As a teenager he worked at a deli, and later at a catering company. One day, his boss took him for a visit to the CIA's idyllic campus in Hyde Park, which overlooks the Hudson River. "I fell in love," Suarez says. He enrolled in the 38-month Bachelor of Professional Studies Program, which includes long externships in outside restaurants. "It was really at the externships that I learned the most, and now I wonder why I didn't just take a $25,000 loan and use that to survive while working my way up in a kitchen." Today, tuition, room, and board for the full bachelor's program cost more than $100,000.

Degree in hand -- Suarez graduated in 2001 -- he left for Colorado to cook and ski, and the CIA credentials got him his first job. "But when I went back to Boston, the degree didn't mean anything," he says. At one interview, the owner asked him why he wanted the job, and Suarez mentioned his CIA training. "He stopped me right there. 'Why should I care about that?' he asked me." Recently, Suarez has been thinking about removing his CIA degree from his resume. And when he hires cooks for his own kitchen, he pays scant attention to their formal culinary schooling.

Not everyone feels the same way. Barry Joyner was at the CIA when he did an externship with Suarez. "I tried to get Barry to stay on and not go back and spend the money on school," Suarez says. But Joyner returned, graduated in 2007, and says he's glad he did. "The school is what you make of it. I felt like I came away with a lot of tools." Currently, he's working in two Boston restaurants -- Top of the Hub and Grill 63 -- and he says that after deferring payment for a year, he's now able to meet his repayment requirements and earn a modest living.

But what about the big dogs, the superstar chefs? I spoke with Wylie Dufresne, a FCI graduate who has brought modern gastronomy to new highs at WD-50 in lower Manhattan. He'd finished Colby College and was working at Gotham Bar & Grill. "But I was still thinking about culinary school, to get the hands-on training in different techniques," he says. After 16 years of formal education, he wasn't interested in the longer, CIA program. Instead he opted for the 6-month program at the French Culinary Institute.

Today, that program costs $42,500, which doesn't include living expenses. "Fortunately, my family was in a position to help me with the cost, which was an important factor," Dufresne says. "There are other ways to get the ball rolling as a cook, but it was a good fit for me. It's a great way to learn the vocabulary of the kitchen." Nonetheless, many of his employees in the kitchen don't have culinary degrees. "It's certainly not a prerequisite," he says.