Cosmetology students sometimes practice haircuts more than medical students practice lumbar punctures

Ever since Gov. Spencer Cox (R-Utah) signed an executive order on his first day in office to reduce unnecessary occupational licensing burdens, the state’s executive branch has been hard at work figuring out the best ways to do so. The Department of Commerce recently published a report explaining how to make cosmetology licensing easier, more sensible, and less burdensome. It involves making sure students are actually trained in their highest-risk services and not wasting their licensing hours literally doing nothing or studying the history of lipstick (which dates back thousands of years).

The Office of Professional Licensure Review (OPLR) chose to investigate Utah’s cosmetology licensing process because the state’s 56,766 licensees represent the largest cohort of any licensed group. Most work part time, while 32 percent do not work at all and 17 percent work more than 30 hours per week. While most states require 1,000-2,000 hours of training to become a cosmetologist, the report found “no rigorous evidence based on consumer safety” to support this standard.

The authors stress that cosmetology students are often excessively trained in low-risk services (performing over 100 haircuts in some cases) and hardly trained at all in the highest-risk ones (e.g., eyelash extensions). Meanwhile, the OPLR found that medical students perform “between five and 45 hands-on repetitions while in training to ensure patient safety in higher-risk procedures” like laser eye procedures or even lumbar punctures. Indeed, the report cites a study finding that most students will need “three to four sessions of deliberate practice to achieve a sustainable level of proficiency in the [lumbar puncture] procedure.” For a pure public policy goal of safety, it is unlikely that haircut benchmarks should match or exceed lumbar puncture benchmarks.

On the other side of the problem, students lack training in the riskier practices of their roles. A master esthetics student informed OPLR that they did not practice using a laser. A licensed master esthetician said they paid $10,000 for training “hoping to focus on laser esthetics, only to perform no laser services in school.” This means the first time some graduates will use a laser is on the job. In even worse cases, multiple people told the OPLR that their training hours included time spent “sitting around” and doing nothing. One student reported doing a project on the “history of lipstick” in school.

“Health and safety” is the common refrain of those who defend current occupational licensing, but the reality is that it is often put aside. Training programs have discretion under law regarding hour requirements, and they clearly are not focusing on the highest-risk services. Indeed, the OPLR goes so far as to say that “[b]eauty schools and others who push for high standards in state licensing above those required for consumer safety are essentially requesting that the State compel students to subsidize their businesses rather than competing on the caliber and price of their instruction.”

Barriers to entry and regulations in general ought to focus on harm to the consumer. The OPLR estimates that the state’s current occupational licensing regime “compelled licensees to spend over 26 million hours in training beyond what is required for them to learn to perform their jobs safely.”

The recommended solutions are unique. Oftentimes, fixes focus more broadly on license or hour requirements. Here, the authors recognize that practice does not have to be all-or-nothing and that aligning hour requirements for safety purposes makes sense. While applicants could continue to receive a full license and learn all services in their area—whether hair design or master esthetics— the OPLR recommends allowing students to receive micro-licenses in what they actually want to practice. This reduces barriers to entry for those who want to work only on, say, nails or laser tattoo removal. There is a lot of in-between space. In order to account for people who move to or from Utah and would want to bring their license, the office recommends that someone with a sufficient combination of earned licenses would be able to be a cosmetologist.

Additionally, the report recommends aligning training with safety by creating “minimum service counts” that are lower for less-risky practices and higher for more risky ones, aligned with the time it takes to teach and learn hands-on. Several other states implement the same rule. The state also recommended a plan that aligns these hours with Pell Grant eligibility requirements.

Thankfully, the OPLC report finds a very low rate of general harm among cosmetology services in the state. To the extent that harm varies, it is by service provided rather than licensee type. For instance, risk was much lower around manicures and higher around eyelash extensions. A recent Institute for Justice study found “no substantive difference in health inspection outcomes for businesses in licensed or more stringently licensed states and businesses in unlicensed or less stringently licensed states.” In fact, while the study reported overall favorable inspection outcomes, it found that the presence of occupational licensing was associated with slightly more health inspection violations among manicurists and barbers.

The Utah Department of Commerce has presented a new and measured approach to cosmetology licensing that will likely improve safety outcomes while cutting costs. Given this evidence, and the fact that the cost of cosmetology training usually exceeds the increase in a student’s lifetime earnings, the state would be wise to consider implementing this approach.