Beauty schools benefit from student grants, hairy economy
Side by side they stood before their mirrors, rows of young women in blue and maroon smocks cradling mannequin heads impaled on spikes, like trophies of a medieval army.
The women applied finger waves and yellow curlers to the dye-stained scalps, whose lurid faces never batted a curlicued eyelash at the sometimes imperfect technique of beauticians in training at the Shear Ego International School of Beauty in Irondequoit.
“I came here five years ago and it was nowhere near as busy as it is now,” said Mary Rose Bentley, a 27-year-old soon-to-be cosmetologist from Greece whose last stint at Shear Ego was a two-month course on nails. “There were maybe five, six girls in a class. Now look.”
Enrollment at beauty schools and other trade schools in western New York and across the state has skyrocketed during the Great Recession, buoyed by the desire of many to jumpstart a new career in relatively short order and $17 billion in federal stimulus money committed to helping Americans go back to school.
Federal data show that the region’s two major cosmetology schools have received more than $1.3 million in stimulus funds via student aid grants through February. The bulk of those funds — $1.2 million — went to the Continental School of Beauty, which operates a chain of six locations across western and central New York and has seen its enrollment climb about 10 percent in the last year.
Shear Ego, where enrollment jumped about 75 percent over the last year to more than 130 students, received about $106,000 in stimulus money, the data show.
“A lot of companies are downsizing now and people are looking in other directions,” said Gene Cardamone, owner of Shear Ego. “The hair industry, as well as cosmetology and skin care, is a very lucrative field.”
The stimulus money is paid to beauty schools in the form of Pell Grants, which are awarded to low-income students and do not have to be repaid. Cosmetology schools, like other accredited trade schools, have always been eligible for Pell Grants. Students apply for the aid and, if they are approved, the grant is delivered to the school.
Monroe Community College, for instance, received nearly $8.5 million in stimulus money through the Pell Grant program last year.
The stimulus bill helped raise the maximum Pell Grant award this year to $5,550 from $4,730 in 2008.
Beauty schools accounted for just 3 percent of Pell spending in Monroe County, according to federal Department of Education data. MCC, by contrast, received nearly half of the $35 million in Pell Grants distributed here last year.
But area beauty schools saw a disproportionate increase in Pell funding last year, fueled by larger numbers of students seeking careers in the industry. Federal data show that while the number of grant recipients at two- and four-year colleges in Monroe County jumped an average of 20 percent in 2009, recipients grew by 31 percent at Continental and 72 percent at Shear Ego.
“In an economic downturn, you see an uptick in applicants at vocational schools because their return on investment is much more attractive to a student than traditional colleges,” said Anthony Fragomeni of Peekskill, Westchester County, who has presided over the American Association of Cosmetology Schools and the New York State Beauty Schools Association. “Colleges are a tremendous amount of money and take a lot of time, where beauty schools you can be done in less than a year and in the work force making money.”
Some students said the aid was the only way they could afford beauty school, where tuition for a cosmetology course that can be completed in about eight months runs upward of $11,000 locally.
“If it hadn’t been for the Pell Grant, I wouldn’t have been able to go to school, period,” said Ashlynn Evans, 27, a Shear Ego student who relocated to Irondequoit from South Carolina last year and received more than $5,000 in federal grants.
Evans, who attends school during the day and waits tables at night to make ends meet, said she was attracted to the flexibility of the profession and prospect of helping people feel better about themselves, on the outside and emotionally.
“People come to stylists for more than a haircut,” Evans said. “They’re psychologists.”
U.S. News & World Report listed cosmetology/hairdressing as one of the 30 best careers in 2009, citing high job satisfaction and the potential for growth.
According to a 2007 survey conducted for the National Accrediting Commission of Cosmetology Arts and Sciences, cosmetologists earn about $48,000 a year in the northeastern United States, and salon professionals are in short supply.
At Continental School of Beauty, where the motto is “Take Your Career Anywhere,” Barbara Silver-Shumway, who owns the business with her husband, said the sour economy has moved people who long dreamed of a cosmetology career to take action.
“Certainly the economy has had some impact (on our growth),” Silver-Shumway said. “We’re seeing in our student body more people coming to us who said they never had the chance to do this. Now, they’re saying, ‘I’m out of work. I need something new. This is my chance.’”
The recession-related enrollment bump notwithstanding, Continental, which has about 1,000 students, including about 340 at its Henrietta location, has experienced steady growth over many years, said its president, Charles Shumway.
Last week, the school opened a location in Syracuse with an inaugural class of 114 students.
“It’s an occupation that is pretty much indifferent to the economy,” Shumway said. “People want to look their best in good times and bad.”
