The Department of Education’s proposed gainful employment rule threatens to shut down cosmetology and barber programs by judging their worth with one rigid earnings test, and that would wreck a proven path to independence for many Americans.
I started in a 20-year-old car and scraped together $700 to launch a hair care business, so I know what career training can do. The new rule measures vocational programs by whether graduates make more after four years than the typical full-time 25 to 34 year old in their state without a degree, and it ignores how most beauty professionals actually build income. This one-size-fits-all metric will crush schools that train barbers, cosmetologists, estheticians and nail technicians, and the consequences will be immediate and painful.
Beauty and barbering are hands-on trades where income often grows over time through tips, repeat clients and entrepreneurs opening their own shops. Many practitioners work part time, juggle childcare, serve as second-income earners, or run independent booths that shift income patterns away from early-career salary snapshots. By comparing newcomers to full-time employees who may have a decade of work behind them, the rule creates a false failure label for programs that reliably launch careers.
The beauty industry is a $100 billion sector employing roughly 1.3 million Americans and serving as an accessible gateway to entrepreneurship. It is one of the rare fields where a marketable credential can be earned in under a year and turned into a business without a four-year loan burden. Strip away Title IV aid and most students — single moms, veterans, first-generation Americans and working-class youth — will be priced out of the very training state law demands for licensure.
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Closing schools will not just shutter classrooms, it will collapse the workforce pipeline at a time of growing demand for human-centered services. Salons, spas and barbershops already compete for skilled stylists; this rule would create chronic shortages, especially in rural towns where service gaps are common. The downstream effects hit product makers, distributors, storefront landlords, and local tax receipts, turning a regulatory tweak into widespread economic harm.
Congress clearly excluded undergraduate certificate programs in licensed trades from this earnings framework when it passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Those limits were intentional, not accidental, and the Department should follow statutory intent rather than impose a backdoor redefinition. Undergraduate certificate programs live in a different reality than degree tracks, and the law recognizes that difference for a reason.
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Secretary Linda McMahon knows what it takes to build a business from scratch and has the authority to fix this without waiting for Congress to act. She should instruct the Department to exempt undergraduate non-degree and certificate programs in licensed trades from the earnings premium test, aligning policy with law and common sense. That single administrative change protects opportunity, preserves a workforce pipeline, and keeps a vital sector intact.
The comment period ends May 20, and now is the moment for owners, instructors, salon operators, manufacturers and customers to make their voices heard. If we fail to push back, schools will close, prospective students will lose affordable training, and communities will lose accessible, licensed care. This is not abstract policy; it determines whether millions can pursue practical, in-person careers that cannot be automated.
Beauty and barbering are pathways to independence, entrepreneurship, creativity and human connection, not fallback options. They lift single parents, veterans and aspiring small business owners into the middle class without forcing a four-year debt sentence. We built this industry with our hands. We will fight for its future.
