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In 1980, I was a Navy veteran sleeping in a 20-year-old car, scraping together $700 to start a hair care company with a stylist named Paul Mitchell. We believed the American Dream was still open for business. Forty-six years later, that same dream is what a federal rule is about to close down for the next generation.
The Department of Education has proposed an earnings premium metric under the gainful employment rule that will judge career programs by one rigid number: whether vocational graduates, four years after completion, earn more than the typical full-time worker aged 25–34 in the same state without a college degree. Programs that fail the test in two out of three years lose access to federal student aid. According to the Department’s own data, more than 92% of beauty and barber programs nationwide would fail.
This is not a minor regulatory tweak. It is a death sentence for thousands of cosmetology, barber, esthetician and nail schools across America. Without Title IV aid, most students — many of them single mothers, veterans, first-generation Americans and working-class kids — simply cannot afford the training and education required for state licensure. Schools will close. The pipeline of new licensed professionals will collapse. And at the exact moment we are being told skilled trades and human-centered careers are the future in an AI-driven economy, we are threatening to defund an industry built on human connection, creativity and hands-on expertise.
The beauty industry is a $100 billion economic engine that employs 1.3 million Americans. It is one of the few sectors where someone can earn a marketable credential in under a year, walk into a shop or salon and build a business. Our professionals are overwhelmingly women who rely on flexible, part-time schedules to raise families while generating income. Many earn the majority of their money through tips and clientele-building — income that grows substantially after the first few years but is invisible in the Department’s early-career snapshot.
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By ignoring these realities — part-time work, tips, self-employment and the female-dominated nature of the field — the rule systematically understates the true value of beauty education. It compares new licensees to full-time workers with only a high-school diploma, many of whom have already been in the workforce for a decade. The result is a false narrative that beauty programs don’t deliver, when in reality, they deliver exactly what millions of Americans need: flexible, entrepreneurial, in-person careers that cannot be automated.
The economic fallout will be swift and widespread. School closures mean fewer licensed professionals entering the workforce at a time when demand is growing. Salons, spas and barbershops will face chronic staffing shortages. Rural communities and small towns — already struggling with service gaps — will see “beauty deserts” where basic grooming and wellness services disappear. Consumers will lose access to safe, licensed care. Small business owners who rely on barbers and stylists will watch revenues fall. The ripple effects will hit product manufacturers, distributors, real estate and local tax bases.
This is not just about beauty and barber schools. It is about stripping opportunity from the very people the American economy claims to champion. The single mother who sees beauty as her path to independence. The veteran looking for a stable second career. The young entrepreneur who dreams of owning her own salon. These are the people who built this $100 billion industry — and the people who will lose the most if it is starved of new talent and fair access to education.
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Congress understood this when it passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law deliberately limits this earnings framework to undergraduate degree programs and graduate certificates. Undergraduate certificate programs like cosmetology and barbering were intentionally left out. The department should follow the law, not rewrite it.
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Secretary Linda McMahon has the power — and the lived experience — to fix this. She knows what it means to build a business from the ground up. She should direct the department to exclude undergraduate non-degree and certificate programs in licensed trades from the earnings premium test, consistent with statutory intent. This single change would protect opportunity, preserve workforce pipelines and safeguard a vital sector of our economy.
The comment period closes May 20. Now is the time for all of us who love this industry — school owners, professionals, salon owners, manufacturers and the millions of Americans we serve — to speak up and protect it for the next generation.
Beauty and barbering are not fallback careers. They are pathways to independence, entrepreneurship, creativity and human connection. They change lives every single day behind the chair.
We built this industry with our hands. We will fight for its future.
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