How Cosmetology Education Cuts Students’ Dreams Short
Article/Op-Ed in Republic Report
Nenad Stojkovic, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
March 20, 2025
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf wrote an article in Republic Report highlighting the key findings of the recently published report: Cut Short The Broken Promises of Cosmetology Education.
In the fall of 2023, the U.S. Department of Education introduced new consumer protections for college students through a federal regulation known as gainful employment. The rule set clear, common-sense benchmarks: career programs must show that graduates earn enough to repay student loans and surpass the average earnings of a high school graduate in their state. Programs that fail either test twice over three years would lose access to taxpayer-funded federal financial aid, which many institutions depend on to survive.
At its core, the rule forces for-profit education to fulfill the promise of higher learning. If a program cannot ensure students earn a credential that leads to stable employment and a livable wage, then it should not be allowed to continue extracting federal funds from vulnerable students.
Yet after the Biden administration finalized these protections in September 2023, an adversary emerged: the cosmetology industry.
Read the full article here.