Republic Report
Oct. 23, 2025
In a piece for Republic Report, Jeremy Bauer-Wolf highlights the key findings of the recently published brief: Cosmetology Without Accountability: Failures of a Beauty School Accreditor.
Beauty school students nationwide, especially those attending large, for-profit chains, often endure hosts of challenges before and after they graduate, research has shown. During school, students often sit through outdated lessons that don’t prep them for a contemporary beauty career, an experience made all the worse when they aren’t paid and their instructors turn over constantly, according to a recent report from think tank New America. And after earning a credential, they often make less than a high school graduate, by $5,000 to $14,000 on average, which may not enable them to pay off their accrued debts.
These schools, then, represent a slice of the higher education sector that deserves strict regulator oversight from government, and an accreditor, an entity that vets colleges’ finances and operations, to determine whether they’re sound enough to accept federal student financial aid.
Read more here.