My Lowly Manicuring License

It has long befuddled me how the state determines its methods of regulating our industry. Mostly, I’m one of those curmudgeon-types who thinks the government should stay out of what they don’t have any experience in. In particular: the salon industry.

I suppose I understand why they got involved to begin with, but (grumble, grumble, grumble) let’s just say I think they’ve gotten in way over their heads and made matters worse by doing so.

My particular beef has largely been the ridiculous requirement that all instructors in cosmetology schools have a cosmetology license. I don’t understand why a cosmetology license would be required to teach the manicuring course? It makes no sense! In fact, it makes the exact opposite of sense. Most of the people with cosmetology licenses specifically wanted to do hair and spent their careers (if they, in fact, had one) doing hair. So it goes to reason that hiring a hairstylist to teach nail technology would result in less-than-adequately-prepared nail professionals.

A few months ago, a colleague who stays up on most matters state board-related informed me that there was no longer a separate instructor license for teaching in California cosmetology schools.

Which led to my immediate demand to know if that meant that manicurists could now teach manicuring. The colleague in question wasn’t 100% sure of the answer and I kinda slacked off on researching the matter until an entirely different colleague was recently recommended to apply at a local cosmetology school that is only beginning to offer the manicuring course.

Now I can’t find the information anywhere. I did find that the State Board of Barbering and Cosmetology is no longer responsible for worrying about cosmetology schools. In fact, I missed the memo — looks to be some four years ago now — that there is now a whole new board (the board of private post-secondary education: bppe.ca.gov) that deals with this now.

The board of barbering/cosmetology directed me to the BPPE and the BPPE website appears to contain no specific information regarding requirements for instructors ... or dress codes ... but it does define graduates who are available for employment as "the number of graduates minus the number of graduates unavailable for employment," which, I thought, was perfectly indicative of how the government overcomplicates things.

I am awaiting a response to my email to the BPPE and if they don’t know (if they don’t know, I’ll be quite concerned that they are in charge of regulating the program at all), I’ll start calling the local schools.

I’m not sure how — or if — I’d be able to fit it into my schedule, but I’m super excited about the prospect of being able to teach with no further qualifications than my 20 years of experience as a nail industry professional and my lowly manicuring license.