A $21,000 Cosmetology School Debt, and a $9-an-Hour Job

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

A $21,000 Cosmetology School Debt, and a $9-an-Hour Job

By Meredith Kolodner and Sarah Butrymowicz
Dec. 26, 2018

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The amount of time Ms. Lozano spent learning to give haircuts, manicures and facials was enormous, but the requirement was set by the state, and she didn’t much question it. She was determined to earn enough money to move out of her mother’s house. Only a few weeks after getting her cosmetology license in 2005, she was hired at a local Great Clips.

The job, though, paid just $9 an hour, which meant that her days double-shifting at Pizza Hut weren’t over. Even with tips, Ms. Lozano didn’t earn more than $25,000 in any of her first few years as a cosmetologist. For years, she relied on food stamps and health insurance from the state. She couldn’t cover living expenses and keep chipping away at her loan payments. Thirteen years after graduating, she still owes more than $8,000.

What Ms. Lozano didn’t know was that the state-regulated school system she had put her faith in relies on a business model in which the drive for revenue often trumps students’ educational needs. For-profit schools dominate the cosmetology training world and reap money from taxpayers, students and salon customers. They have beaten back attempts to create cheaper alternatives, even while miring their students in debt. In Iowa in particular, the companies charge steep prices — nearly $20,000 on average for a cosmetology certificate, equivalent to the cost of a two-year community-college degree twice over — and they have fought to keep the required number of school hours higher than anywhere else in the country.

Each state sets its own standards. Most require 1,500 hours, and some, like New York and Massachusetts, require only 1,000. Iowa requires 2,100 — that’s a full year’s worth of 40-hour workweeks, plus an extra 20. By comparison, you can become an emergency medical technician in the state after 132 hours at a community college. Put another way: An Iowa cosmetologist who has a heart attack can have her life saved by a medic with one-sixteenth her training.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/business/cosmetology-school-debt-iowa.html

[Freethinker65]

1. I get my hair cut at these places and always tip well

Plus I add any coupon discount back and add it to to the tip.

[Freddie]

2. The best place to learn cosmetology

Is a tech HS, if you decide that’s what you want when in HS and your district offers it. It’s generally not offered at community colleges, only the (usually) rip-off for-profit schools.
I work at a tech HS and we have 2 cosmetology teachers, it’s a popular program. But the one teacher told me that the job market is not great (wages never were) as the “weekly wash and set” ladies are mostly gone now.

[MichMan]

3. I have sympathy for the people who incurred all the debt

…. but any amount of research at all would have shown what wages would be expected and that borrowing $23K was not a good investment.

The licensing requirements do seem ludicrous. In most cases, the people that oppose any reductions in licensing requirements are those who are already licensed as they had to do it and don't want any more competition by making it easier