Beauty school students nationwide, especially those attending large, for-profit chains, often endure hosts of challenges before and after they graduate, research has shown. During school, students often sit through outdated lessons that don’t prep them for a contemporary beauty career, an experience made all the worse when they aren’t paid for their work and their instructors turn over constantly, according to a recent report from think tank New America. And after earning a credential, they often make less than a high school graduate, by $5,000 to $14,000 on average, which may not enable them to pay off their accrued debts.

These schools, then, represent a slice of the higher education sector that deserves strict regulator oversight from government, and their accreditor, an entity that vets colleges’ finances and operations, to determine whether they’re sound enough to accept federal student financial aid.

Except the accreditor that works with most U.S. beauty schools is not meeting  its oversight duties, a New America investigation published this month has found. 

The National Accrediting Commission of Career Arts and Sciences, or NACCAS, has failed to enforce federal regulations and its own rules that mandate colleges accurately publicize their accreditation status, including when they’ve been sanctioned, New America found. 

Several schools that NACCAS sanctioned, for a range of reasons, like financial tumult, do not reference that punishment on their websites or in online course catalogues. New America researchers conducted secret shopping on some of these schools, posing as prospective students in telephone calls and inquiring about their accreditation standing. Those schools by and large did not divulge that NACCAS had either put them on probation or acted to withdraw their accreditation. 

Separately, NACCAS’ system of supervising and sanctioning colleges is illogical—instead of assessing colleges’ full records, the accreditor treats each rule violation as a stand-alone problem. For instance, NACCAS might provide a sanctioned college a year to correct a problem. But if a new issue arises during that period—and the college resolves the original rule violation on time—it gets an extension, even if the punishment was for the same problem. Schools essentially can cycle through violations this way for years.

In one case, NACCAS issued a “show-cause” order to a school called Arizona Academy of Beauty in October 2024, according to a public database.

A show-cause order in accreditation is an indication of a serious infraction that could lead to loss of accreditation. Arizona Academy had failed to submit audited financial statements, which NACCAS relies on to determine whether a college has sufficient funding to deliver a quality education. 

Two months after NACCAS issued the order, it sought to revoke Arizona Academy’s accreditation. However, while the school appealed that decision, NACCAS sent another show-cause order in February 2025 for another transgression—the school again hadn’t provided its financial statements. NACCAS’s choice to send that second show-cause order was nonsensical, as it had already started to pull the school’s accreditation over the same rule violation.

NACCAS’s conduct underscores that higher education accountability without enforcement is no accountability at all. 

NACCAS should strengthen its standards, requiring full transparency around accreditation status, consolidating redundant sanctions, shortening appeal timelines, and imposing real consequences for persistent problems. Meanwhile, the U.S. Education Department should investigate whether NACCAS is fulfilling its role as a reliable gatekeeper of federal funds. Congress, too, must act by strengthening protections for students and establishing clearer penalties for negligent accreditors. 

Without meaningful reform, accreditors like NACCAS will continue shielding failing institutions instead of protecting students and taxpayers.

The full research, Cosmetology Without Accountability: Failures of a Beauty School Accreditor, is available on New America’s website.