So you want to be a chef?

PROVIDENCE -- Every morning Nathaniel Brethold crawls out of bed, dons his freshly pressed whites, and reports by 6 a.m. to the Johnson & Wales office of culinary events. For the next 8 1/2 hours, he'll plan events, do paperwork, arrange transportation for contest participants, find photographers, maybe even teach a class for an absent instructor. He takes a break in the afternoon, and then from 6 p.m. to almost 11 p.m. the 21-year-old goes to class. Compared to the typical college student who avoids early classes or any held on Friday, Brethold is diligent to a fault.

On the other hand, if things go as planned, the St. Louis native, who's the first in his family to go directly from high school to college, will be able to walk into a job when he graduates next year. The placement rate of graduates at Johnson & Wales College of Culinary Arts is 98 percent -- within 60 days of graduation. That's a rate analogous to several of the other major culinary schools.

Every decade has the career -- the one parents and pundits solemnly recommend. It was "plastics" to "The Graduate" of the '60s, computers for the '80s, investment banking for the '90s. For the '00s, the career passport may be a chef's toque.

Going to culinary school once might have been a fallback for high school students not on a college track. But in a few

short decades, a culinary education has become sought after, and a career as a chef viewed as a chance for glory. Culinary schools have gone from community-college adjuncts to four-year competitors in higher education. Brethold was awarded a $30,000 scholarship to Johnson & Wales after he won the school's national recipe contest in 2001. "My parents were absolutely thrilled," he says. The culinary college here opened in 1973 with 100 students, says dean Karl Guggenmos. Now there are branches in Charleston, S.C.; Norfolk, Va.; Miami; and Denver, with a total of 5,600 students, part of a larger university offering business and technology degrees. Next fall a $112-million branch will open in Charlotte, N.C., says Guggenmos, with a "state of the art" culinary campus. J&W's most famous culinary

graduate is celebrity chef and Fall River native Emeril Lagasse (class of '90). The explosion of programs -- there are 487 in this country listed in guidebook Peterson's Culinary Schools 2004 -- ranges from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. (the alma mater of Boston chefs Todd English and Jasper White), to the Atlantic Culinary Academy in Dover, N.H., which in its third year has 250 students. Atlantic Culinary, which is affiliated with Le Cordon Bleu, anticipates doubling its enrollment in the next year and a half, according to executive chef and culinary director Jim Gallivan. Community colleges such as Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown, which has had a culinary program since 1980, report interest is growing steadily.

And there are more programs in the works. New Hampshire Community Technical College in Claremont, N.H., is looking at an affiliation with a Swiss school, says Francis Walsh, vice president of corporate and community affairs. "The time has come to consider it," Walsh says.

"What happened in this country," J & W's Guggenmos, who is also a German master chef, says, "was a renaissance of culinary arts over the last few decades." He points to a milestone in 1974 when the US Department of Labor's trade registry moved culinary arts from its "domestics" listing to a profession. The school added a bachelor's degree in 1986; students can major in food marketing, culinary nutrition, and many other fields as well as professional cooking or pastry.

At the Culinary Institute of America, which has graduated hundreds of celebrity chefs, students "are a different group than in the past," says Druscilla Blackman, director of admissions management. Enrollment has doubled in seven years, she says. About 40 percent of those who come right from high school are interested in a four-year degree; the rest of the population is career changers or people adding a culinary education to a college degree.

Walking around J&W's Providence campus, one notices the purposeful look of the students, who must be in class at 7 a.m., dressed in neatly pressed chef's whites (white jacket, a tie to indicate class standing, and a chef's toque). As a roomful of young people work to pipe chocolate in perfect lines, Martha Crawford, who heads the baking and pastry department, says she's teaching patience along with skills. She points out a lab where students pick one ingredient and work with it many different ways. "It's really a place where they can make a mistake -- say, using bread flour instead of cake flour for a cake -- and then they really understand why that happens."

"We're looking to prepare a very well-rounded" cook, she adds.

One of the more unusual aspects of J & W is its culinary nutrition program, which is four years old. Department chair Suzanne Vieira says she pushed for the unusual concentration because "I felt a disconnect between food and nutrition," she says. There's been a 600 percent growth in those majoring in the field. Some graduates, Vieira says, will go on to become dietitians in a hospital or in food service; others will work for sports teams or in spas. She agrees that J & W students are different. "They're very focused," she says. "I don't think they could survive in this business other-wise." Many work 80 hours a week in the program and in jobs outside. It's easy to understand that kind of focus when you look at students' career charts. Associate dean Paul McVety explains that each student begins to map out a chart as a freshman, to design a curriculum and internships that will get the student where he or she wants to go. "We try to expand their vision," he says.Some, like Alexandra Holbrook, combine culinary learning with an already full life. Now working at UpStairs on the Square in an 11-week co-op program, Holbrook attends J & W classes Sundays from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. She also works full time in an insurance office and squeezes in course work for a masters in gastronomy at Boston University. After two years of this schedule, she'll graduate in May; despite the pace, she's been thrilled with what she's gained. Ikimi Dubose, who came to J & W as part of a scholarship program for urban high school students, already has a management trainee job at the Boston Marriott Copley Place hotel months before graduation. Not aspiring to own her own restaurant, Dubose says "I would like to run a large kitchen," particularly in a hotel.

Brethold, who fell in love with the culinary world when he worked for the Ritz-Carlton in St. Louis while in high school, is excited about his education, too. The events-planning work at J & W is essentially on-the-job training, Brethold says, for what he hopes his future will be.

"My main goal is to be a food and beverage manager at a Ritz-Carlton."