Food Preparation/Professional Cooking/Kitchen Assistant

What Food Preparation/Professional Cooking/Kitchen Assistant Majors Need to Know

In an O*NET survey, food preparation/professional cooking/kitchen assistant majors were asked to rate what knowledge areas, skills, and abilities were important in their occupations. These answers were weighted on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the most important.

Knowledge Areas for Food Preparation/Professional Cooking/Kitchen Assistant Majors

This major prepares you for careers in which these knowledge areas are important:

• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Food Production - Knowledge of techniques and equipment for planting, growing, and harvesting food products (both plant and animal) for consumption, including storage/handling techniques.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Administration and Management - Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
• Mathematics - Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.

Skills for Food Preparation/Professional Cooking/Kitchen Assistant Majors

A major in food preparation/professional cooking/kitchen assistant prepares you for careers in which the following skill-sets are crucial:

• Service Orientation - Actively looking for ways to help people.
• Critical Thinking - Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
• Speaking - Talking to others to convey information effectively.
• Monitoring - Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action.
• Judgment and Decision Making - Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one.

Abilities for Food Preparation/Professional Cooking/Kitchen Assistant Majors

A major in food preparation/professional cooking/kitchen assistant will prepare for your careers in which the following abilities are important:

• Near Vision - The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Arm-Hand Steadiness - The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.

Amount of Education Required for Careers Related to Food Preparation/Professional Cooking/Kitchen Assistant

Some careers associated with food preparation/professional cooking/kitchen assistant require an advanced degree while some may not even require a bachelor’s. Whatever the case may be, pursuing more education usually means that more career options will be available to you.

Find out what the typical degree level is for food preparation/professional cooking/kitchen assistant careers below.

Education Level	Percentage of Workers
Less than a High School Diploma	2.9%
High School Diploma - or the equivalent (for example, GED)	58.1%
Post-Secondary Certificate - awarded for training completed after high school (for example, in agriculture or natural resources, computer services, personal or culinary services, engineering technologies, healthcare, construction trades, mechanic and repair technologies, or precision production)	22.2%
Some College Courses	10.3%
Associate’s Degree (or other 2-year degree)	6.5%
Bachelor’s Degree	4.5%

Online Food Preparation/Professional Cooking/Kitchen Assistant Programs

The following table lists the number of programs by degree level, along with how many schools offered online courses in the field.

Degree Level	Colleges Offering Programs	Colleges Offering Online Classes
Certificate (Less Than 1 Year)	0	0
Certificate (1-2 years)	31	0
Certificate (2-4 Years)	1	0
Associate’s Degree	6	1
Bachelor’s Degree	0	0
Post-Baccalaureate	0	0
Master’s Degree	0	0
Post-Master’s	0	0
Doctor’s Degree (Research)	0	0
Doctor’s Degree (Professional Practice)	0	0
Doctor’s Degree (Other)	0	0

Majors Related to Food Preparation/Professional Cooking/Kitchen Assistant

You may also be interested in one of the following majors related to food preparation/professional cooking/kitchen assistant.

Major	Number of Grads
Culinary Arts/Chef Training	10,286
Baking & Pastry Arts/Baker/Pastry Chef	5,508
General Cooking & Related Culinary Arts	3,586
Restaurant, Culinary, & Catering Management/Manager	1,291
Other Culinary Arts & Related Services	382
Culinary Science/Culinology	278
Institutional Food Workers	214
Bartending/Bartender	194
Food Service, Waiter/Waitress, & Dining Room Management/Manager	80
Meat Cutting/Meat Cutter	54
Wine Steward/Sommelier	3

References

*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.

• College Factual
• College Scorecard
• National Center for Education Statistics
• O*NET Online
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers First Quarter 2020
• Image Credit: By U.S. Army Europe Images under License

More about our data sources and methodologies.