Cooking, baking and pastry, and running a kitchen, taught in Florida as clock-hour certificates at technical colleges and as college-credit certificates and associate degrees at state colleges. ⚠⚠ About 1,255 credentials a year at 46 public institutions, and no bachelor's degree anywhere: the four-year route is hospitality management.
The degrees this program covers
⚠⚠ Three programmes share this classification. Culinary Arts / Chef Training (12.0503) is the largest, 620 credentials a year at 44 institutions, nearly all certificates: Valencia 87, Miami Dade 52, Atlantic Technical 49, McFatter Technical 36. Baking and Pastry Arts (12.0501) is 352 at 12, and ⚠⚠ Valencia alone awards 234 of them, two thirds of the state. Restaurant, Culinary and Catering Management (12.0504) is 280 at 12, 146 of them associate degrees, led by Valencia 78 and Miami Dade 76. ⚠⚠⚠ Florida's clock-hour programme, Commercial Foods and Culinary Arts, is 1,200 hours in four 300-hour courses named after jobs: Food Preparation, Cook (Restaurant), Chef/Head Cook and Food Service Management. The baking programme is 600 hours: Pastry Cook/Baker, then Pastry Chef/Head Baker. Each completion point is a place to stop and be hired, so ask whether the college awards a certificate there. ⚠ Clock hours are not college credit: moving from a technical-college certificate to an A.S. depends on an articulation agreement between the two schools. ⚠ None of these jobs requires the programme to start. What the programme buys is a structured start, the Florida food-safety certificates, baking, and the management rung.
Careers this program leads to
Each one sets out the courses along the way, the licence or certification at the end,
and the sources behind it.
Neighbouring fields that share much of the same coursework, and often the same employers.
⚠ Read these before you commit to a major — which doors a neighbouring degree
keeps open is the part no catalog tells you, and it is far cheaper to change now than later.
46 institutions awarded a credential in this field in 2023,
at these levels: Associate, Certificate (<12 weeks), Certificate (1-2 years), Certificate (12 weeks-1 year), Certificate (2-4 years).
A school appears here if it awards anything in the field, however limited
its offering — a technical college teaching only practical nursing has a nursing
program. Listed alphabetically, not ranked.
Source: federal IPEDS completions data for 2023, first majors only —
the most recent year published. ⚠ It records what was awarded, which is
strong evidence of what is offered, but a program launched since 2023
will not appear here. Check the institution’s own catalog before applying.
Updated 23 September 2026.
⚠ Program pages describe a field of study, not one school’s degree — always
read the catalog of the institution you are applying to.