Do Beauty Schools Need To Be Accredited?
Many individuals seeking to learn valuable career skills, work hard towards an education and find profitable long-term employment seek out opportunities outside of traditional four-year colleges. For many, beauty schools offer a relatively short path to full-time employment, benefits and opportunities for entrepreneurship.
Owning one’s own business is a staple of the American dream, and pursuing an education through beauty schools can provide a great first step towards financial independence and success. As with all schools, though, prospective students would be wise to learn as much as possible about the various programs on offer, and evaluate to the best of their ability how any individual school might meet their needs and help them to make their dreams come true.
Do Beauty Schools Need To Be Accredited?
One of the most important questions to ask is “does a beauty school have to be accredited?” While colleges and universities have traditionally required accreditation to operate legally, the past 20 years in the United States have seen a great many smaller, private, unaccredited schools open and operate in areas of study ranging from the traditional liberal arts up to and including trade schools for electricians, plumbers, information technology workers and aestheticians.
Accreditation can be a tricky subject to navigate, but smart students know that doing their research before signing up will yield valuable results, and can save a great deal of time, money and effort over the long run.
Why Accreditation Is Important
The simple answer to our question is “No.” A beauty school does not have to be accredited, but it is in much the same way that one does not have to have a drivers license to technically drive a car. The reality is, though, that driving a car without a license will inevitably lead to some very troubling results with law enforcement, and while unaccredited beauty schools are not quite on a par with such perpetrators, they do carry a number of pitfalls that accredited beauty schools can avoid.
The Benefits of Accreditation
Accredited schools earn their accreditation by establishing themselves as meeting certain standards, standards that accrediting bodies use to determine whether or not a school is offering an appropriate education to its students, operating fairly and providing opportunities as it should. While it is almost certain that some schools without such accreditation provide an outstanding education to their students, accreditation awarded to schools establishes them as doing so, rather than relying upon nebulous standards and often fraudulent ratings.
Accreditation carries the same weight for beauty schools as it does for the state university system, in that it evaluates and judges a school’s merits fairly, and rewards their diligence and excellence.
Benefits to the Graduates
Graduates of unaccredited schools may find their employment opportunities significantly diminished upon entering the very competitive job market. Employers and businesses tend to respect and honor accredited schools over their lackluster peers in much the same way that they do when it comes to traditional college educations.
A degree from an unaccredited college simply does not carry the same weight as does one from, for example, a state university or college. Smart prospective students would be wise to weigh the value of accreditation when it comes to choosing the right educational opportunities for their futures.
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