We Built This Problem. Now We Have to Fix It.
The federal government is about to defund 92% of cosmetology schools in America. And I need the beauty industry to stop pointing at Washington for a minute and look in the mirror.
I say that as someone who started behind the chair at 18 with nothing but a cosmetology license and a willingness to work. This industry gave me a path. I am not here to tear it down. I am here because I think we are about to watch it collapse, and the most honest thing I can do is tell you exactly why.
The Department of Education has proposed a rule that would eliminate federal student loan and Pell Grant eligibility for cosmetology programs whose graduates don’t out-earn workers with only a high school diploma four years after graduation. The Department’s own projections show 92.5% of cosmetology programs would fail that test. If they do, the schools lose funding, enrollment collapses, and the pipeline ends.
Everyone in this industry is rushing to file comments and post about how the government is wrong. And the government is wrong, the measurement is broken, the proposed solution is backwards, and the rule arguably exceeds the authority Congress granted. I have filed a formal comment making exactly that case.
But before we get there, I need us to sit with something uncomfortable.
The Earnings Data the Government is Reacting to Is Real
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a national median annual wage of approximately $35,230 for cosmetologists. That number is not fabricated. It reflects actual reported earnings from actual graduates. And if we want to fight the government’s conclusion, we have to be honest about why that number is what it is, because it is not because this career doesn’t work.
It is because we never taught people how to build it.
Think about what cosmetology school actually covers. Technique. Sanitation. State board requirements. What it does not cover: how to price a service for profitability, how to consult a client into a high-value service, what a client book needs to look like to hit a real income target, the difference between revenue and take-home pay, or how to build retention that compounds year over year. Graduates walk out technically skilled and economically unprepared. That is not the student’s failure. That is a curriculum failure.
And before anyone points at the schools, that failure continues the moment graduates walk into their first salon. Commission salons with owners who have never built a real compensation structure or taught their team the economics of the profession. Independent operators who were told to go out and be their own boss without a single lesson on what that actually requires. The knowledge gap exists everywhere. The model was never the problem. The education was.
The path to higher income in this profession runs through higher revenue. That math is not complicated. A recurring extension client generates $3,700 in annual value. The average cut-and-color client generates $480. That 7.7x multiplier is not a talent difference. It is a knowledge difference. A stylist who knows how to consult for extensions and build that client relationship captures $3,700 a year. One who doesn’t captures $480, and often sees that client only once or twice a year due to a lack of retention focus, bringing the actual number closer to $130 to $260. Multiply that across a full book of clients, and you understand exactly how this industry produces the earnings data that is now being used against it.
I have been proving this with transaction-level data for three years at my own salon. A 24-year-old stylist on my team generated $246,000 in service revenue last year with net income above $120,000. A 22-year-old who graduated 18 months ago is on pace for $180,000 in revenue this year. A 38-year-old mother of three working 29 hours a week generates over $160,000 in annual service revenue with a net income around $75,000. These are not exceptional people. They are educated people. There is a difference.
The ceiling in this profession is dramatically higher than the industry communicates. The distance between that ceiling and reported median wages is a curriculum, knowledge, and strategy gap, not a career gap.
Now, here is the piece of this conversation the rest of the industry is missing entirely. While the federal government debates whether cosmetology education is worth funding, artificial intelligence is eliminating the careers people thought were safe. Lawyers. Paralegals. Financial analysts. Customer service departments. Entire professional categories that once required degrees and promised stability are being restructured around automation. And cosmetology is growing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 84,200 annual job openings in this field through 2034. Because no algorithm installs extensions on a client who trusts you. No machine builds the relationship that keeps someone in your chair for fifteen years. This is one of the last structurally AI-resistant professions in the American economy, and we are about to let the federal government defund the schools that train people for it because we never required those schools to teach business.
The solution is not filing comments and hoping a regulator changes their mind. The solution is a law.
My team and I are actively working with legislators to introduce federal legislation requiring verified business and financial literacy education as a mandatory component of every Title IV-eligible cosmetology curriculum. Not a suggestion. A requirement. The knowledge that closes the gap, pricing strategy, annual client value, retention systems, high-value service consultation, and cash flow management, built into the curriculum from day one. So that the next person who walks into cosmetology school gets a real foundation, not just a license.
We built this problem at every level. Schools that never required business education. Salons that absorbed graduates and repeated the same pattern. A culture that glorified hustle and passion while ensuring the knowledge required to actually succeed financially never got transferred to the people who needed it most.
We owe it to every person we recruited into this industry with a dream and no roadmap to fix it. If you believe this industry deserves better, from the schools, from the salons, and from the government, I need your support on record. Sign this form. Show up for the next generation of this industry the way you wish someone had shown up for you.
