Cosmetology Gets a Trim: The Impact of Reducing Licensing Hours on Colleges and Students

Nicolas Acevedo Rebolledo, Kathryn J. Blanchard and Stephanie Riegg Cellini

No 33936, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In the United States, licenses are required for entry into many different occupations. Requirements vary by state and occupation, but many licenses require a minimum number of training or instructional hours. We consider the impact of these hours requirements on students and postsecondary institutions, with a particular focus on cosmetology (also known as hairstyling or beauty). Cosmetology licensing requires extensive training hours (between 500 and 2,100 hours) in every state and typically exceeds the time required for similar licenses. We implement a difference-in-difference design based on state-level changes in required licensing hours for cosmetologists between 2011 and 2019. We ask how and whether changes to hours requirements influence student outcomes and institutional behavior. We find that lowering required hours is likely beneficial for students, as it raises completion, lowers tuition, and expands enrollment among some groups of students. Larger institutions appear to reduce their tuition by less than smaller institutions. We find no detectable effects on the earnings of cosmetologists.

JEL-codes: I21 I23 I28 J44 J48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
Note: ED LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33936.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33936

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33936
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().