Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland: the Swiss Education Group's cooking school, what its QS ranking actually measures, and what the Swiss trained hoteliers in my books say

Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland is a cooking school that came out of a hotel school, and that history explains most of what is distinctive about it, including the ranking it advertises. It belongs to Swiss Education Group, the private company that also runs César Ritz Colleges, Swiss Hotel Management School and Hotel Institute Montreux, and it teaches in English to an international student body on two campuses in French speaking Switzerland. It appears on this site because it recurs on the published lists of culinary schools and because its ranking claim needs explaining before a student takes it at face value. Nobody in my books studied there; several of the hoteliers trained at Swiss hotel schools, and I turn to them below.

What the school is

The school’s 2024/25 brochure dates its founding to 2006, as an extension of César Ritz Colleges Switzerland. Wikipedia traces a longer lineage to a hotel management career centre opened in Lucerne in 1991 and records that the Lucerne campus closed in 2022; those details are uncited on Wikipedia and the school’s own site does not confirm them, which is why older lists placing the school in Lucerne no longer match what the school says about itself.

Today the school’s admissions page names two campuses. Le Bouveret sits on the shore of Lake Geneva at the eastern end of the lake, and the brochure places the Mosimann Collection there, a collection of culinary memorabilia provided by the Swiss chef Anton Mosimann. Brig is in the upper Rhône valley in the canton of Valais, and the brochure describes Restaurant Alpina there, run by bachelor’s students in their final term, alongside a 100 seat training restaurant.

In the field, the school sits between the two kinds of institution this site covers. It is a culinary school in what it teaches and a hotel school in how it is run, with the same English language instruction, international recruitment and internship model as the Swiss hotel schools around it. It also means the school is measured, when it is measured at all, against hotel schools rather than cooking schools, which brings me to the ranking.

What the QS ranking measures

The school’s news pages have carried headlines such as Eighth best in the world in Culinary Arts Education, and its home page describes it as the number one culinary school in Switzerland by QS 2026.

QS does not rank culinary arts. No ranking organization does. QS publishes a World University Rankings by Subject table for Hospitality and Leisure Management, a hotel and tourism management ranking led by the Swiss hotel schools: EHL in Lausanne took first place in the 2025 table, and in the 2026 table Les Roches placed second and Glion third, as Hospitality Net reported in March 2026. The scores QS publishes for those schools are academic reputation and employer reputation, which are survey results, so the table measures how well known a school is among academics and employers, and says nothing direct about what happens in a kitchen or a classroom.

Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland appears in that hospitality table. Its own 2023 news item says that for the third consecutive year the school ranked eighth in the world for hospitality management; its brochure cites seventh in 2024; a later news item cites eighth in the 2025 table and calls the school the only culinary school to rank in the top ten; and a Swiss Education Group release lists the group’s four schools together in one year’s top ten, with the academy eighth. Wikipedia’s table gives ninth for 2026. So the accurate version of the claim is this: the school is the one cooking school that appears in QS’s hotel management ranking, where it has placed between seventh and ninth in recent years. That is a creditable fact, and it is a measurement of reputation among hoteliers and academics rather than of culinary teaching. No independent outcome data on its graduates exists that I could find, and the Chef’s Pencil studies of where Michelin starred chefs trained do not mention it.

Programs and how they are taught

The admissions page lists five main programs, all full time and all in English. The Professional Swiss Diploma in Culinary Arts and the Professional Swiss Diploma in Pastry Arts each run one year including one internship. The Bachelor of Arts in Culinary Arts and the Bachelor of Arts in Pastry, Bakery and Chocolate Arts each run three years including two internships; the brochure says a Swiss Grand Diploma is awarded after the first year. The Master of Arts in Culinary Business Management runs one year including one internship. The brochure adds an eleven week Swiss Certificate in Vegetarian and Plant Based Culinary Arts, and the admissions page lists English and Immersion Foundation Programs.

On credentials, the brochure says the Swiss Higher Diploma and the bachelor’s are recognized by the Canton of Valais, and that the BA (Hons) in Culinary Arts and the MA in Culinary Business Management are awarded by the University of Derby in England. That matters for a student who wants a degree an employer outside Switzerland will read easily; it also means the degree is a British university’s rather than a Swiss federal one.

The practical component is where the hotel school model shows most clearly. The brochure puts the internships at about six months on the diplomas and four to six months on the bachelor’s and master’s, placed with the school’s help in Switzerland or abroad. On campus, students cook for the training restaurant and, in the final bachelor’s term in Brig, run Restaurant Alpina. The school’s site carries the current internship terms and the restaurants’ seasons.

Who it is for and how to get in

The school’s admissions page asks for a high school or university transcript, diploma or certificate, proof of English proficiency by TOEFL, IELTS or equivalent, a passport copy, a curriculum vitae, a motivation letter of at least 500 words and reference letters where applicable, with documents translated into English by an official translator. The brochure gives the English entry level as IELTS 5.5 to 6.0 depending on program. Fees and intake dates change each year and the school’s site carries them.

This school suits a student who wants an English language culinary education in Switzerland with a business degree attached and who expects to work internationally. It suits less well a student who wants the classical French brigade route through a state school such as FERRANDI or Institut Lyfe, or a Swiss federal qualification; the Swiss cook’s apprenticeship, the Koch EFZ, is a three year workplace route and a different thing altogether.

What the hoteliers and chefs in my books say

No chef in my books trained at any Swiss culinary school. What my books do hold is a group of hoteliers who went through the Swiss hotel schools this school grew out of and is ranked beside, and their accounts are the honest connection. Marc Brugger, who ran Rosewood Hong Kong and Rosewood Beijing when I interviewed him, grew up in Lausanne and chose between a Paris business school and the hotel school in his home city.

“I visited both schools, and when I saw the atmosphere at EHL, suddenly all of my early memories and emotions came back to me from traveling to glamorous hotels when I was young. I wanted to join an industry where I could create those memories for others.” Marc C. Brugger, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

Ralph Radtke, who ran the Çırağan Palace Kempinski in Istanbul, went to Glion after two years as a room service waiter at Le Bristol in Paris, and his account shows what the internship model is for.

“While in school, I completed two trainings at Hotel Cipriani in Venice. I first served as chef de rang, and then as assistant manager of the restaurant.” Ralph Radtke, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

The people in my books who went through Swiss schools speak of the placements rather than the lectures as the formative part. Eric Ripert, who went to culinary school in France, remembers his own placement for the same reason.

“I was training in between my first and second years of culinary school when my chef handed me about 25 ducks, asking me to debone them all, confit the legs, then freeze the breasts.” Eric Ripert, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

A week later the chef asked for one breast and received a frozen block of almost fifty. Ripert never made the mistake again. That is what a six month internship is for, and it is the part of this school’s program I would weigh most heavily.

How to decide

Read the ranking for what it is and then decide on the things it does not measure: where the school placed last year’s students for their internships, what the training restaurant serves and who eats there, and how the University of Derby degree is read by the employers you want. If you want a culinary career that leads toward running food and beverage in hotels, the hotel school inheritance is an asset. If you want to cook at the highest level, the internship will matter more than the campus, and the chefs in my books are unanimous that the education that counts is delivered in the kitchen. Chapter 2 of The Luxury of Attention, The Apprenticeship, sets out what that kitchen has to give you: structure, correction and patience. The Luxury of Attention (2026), Chapter 2

Sources

• Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland, Admissions
• Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland, home page
• Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland 2024/25 brochure (PDF)
• Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland, “Eighth best in the world in Culinary Arts Education” (QS 2023)
• Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland, “Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland again ranks at the top in QS World University Rankings” (QS 2025)
• Swiss Education Group, “Swiss Education Group schools dominate top 10 hospitality institutions worldwide”
• QS World University Rankings by Subject, Hospitality and Leisure Management
• Hospitality Net, “Glion and Les Roches lead global hospitality education in the 2026 QS rankings” (25 March 2026)
• Wikipedia, Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland
• Chef’s Pencil, 61% of America’s Michelin starred chefs are culinary school alumni (16 March 2026)