Teacher Training

600 clock hours. Full time, 24 weeks. Part time, 36 weeks.

Starts are any Tuesday of the month.

Full time is 25–40 hours a week; part time is 16–24. The school is open Tuesday to Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and student schedules run 9:00 a.m. to between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. Every enrolled student must attend at least 16 Saturday hours per month. Additional full- and part-time schedules can be arranged within the school’s operating hours. The academy offers no distance education.

Extra hours past your completion date cost $13.17 each.

A practical scheduling note: 180 of these hours are observation, assisting and student teaching inside a live school, so your schedule has to overlap with classes that are actually running. The academy is open Tuesday to Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

$9,500 Total Required — tuition $7,900.00, a $100.00 non-refundable registration fee and $1,500.00 for kit, supplies and books, also non-refundable. Priced identically to Full Specialist.

Weigh it against what the academy itself says. Florida does not require this programme to be licensed as an instructor. $9,500 and 24 weeks is a real investment in something the state will not ask you for — worth it if you want to teach well and want the 180 hours of supervised practice, and worth questioning if you only want the credential.

Federal aid applies to this programme. The academy offers Federal Pell Grants and Federal Direct Student Loans to those who qualify; its FAFSA school code is 016785. Applying means a personal interview with the school director and a financial aid application, and the award depends on demonstrated need. If aid does not cover the full cost you can pay the difference at registration or through a payment plan.

Other ways to pay, from the catalog: cash, Pell Grant, student loan, cheque, credit or debit card, VA benefits, money order, or any other method the school approves. You may pay in full at enrolment. The academy also works with FAME, a third-party financial aid management company, and will review a changed financial situation — job loss, divorce, lost income — under Professional Judgment. There is a scholarship policy: requests must be in writing and are granted only after signed approval from the Administrative Board.

The registration fee and the kit charge are non-refundable, and they are inside the published total. The academy’s tuition table lists tuition, then a $100 registration fee, then kit, supplies and books, and totals all three as “Total Required”. All kit fees are mandatory — the catalog says so under the table. Books and supplies become your responsibility and are non-returnable.

Run over your scheduled completion date and you pay by the hour. The academy publishes the rate for every programme; for this one it is $13.17 per hour. The rate is the programme’s tuition divided by its hours, so it is not a penalty — but it is real money on a programme you have already paid for, and it is the reason the attendance policy matters.

Withdrawing costs a $100 cancellation or administrative fee, on top of the non-refundable registration and kit charges. Beyond that the academy publishes the standard NACCAS six-band schedule of what it retains: 20 per cent up to 4.9 per cent of scheduled time, 30 per cent to 9.9 per cent, 40 per cent to 14.9 per cent, 45 per cent to 24.9 per cent, 70 per cent to 49.9 per cent, and 100 per cent at or beyond halfway. Refunds are made within 30 days.

Three cancellation cases get all your money back: the school does not accept you; you cancel in writing within three business days of signing the enrolment agreement (whether or not classes have started); or the academy cancels the course. Cancel after three business days but before classes start and you get everything back less the $100 registration fee.

State fees are separate and are not paid to the school. The catalog publishes no state fee for Teacher Training, and the Florida Department of Education does not require the programme for licensure as an instructor.

If you are on VA benefits, the catalog warns that falling below the scheduled hours on your contract will have those benefits terminated.

$9,500 Total Required — $7,900 tuition, a $100 non-refundable registration fee and $1,500 for kit, supplies and books.

The programme prepares a licensed cosmetologist to work as a cosmetology instructor. Its examination, like Full Specialist, Skin Care and Manicuring, is given on the school’s own premises rather than through Pearson Vue. The catalog publishes no state fee for it.

On-time completion for this programme: 0 actual graduates of 0 scheduled — N/A. Nobody was scheduled to graduate in the reporting year, so there is no figure — not a zero, an N/A.

The career ladder the academy itself describes runs cosmetology teacher, school director, school owner — three of the entries on its own published list of careers open to graduates. Its corporate staff and faculty list is made up of licensed cosmetologists who teach, which is the model this programme trains for.

Instruction is not the only use of the training. Lesson planning, demonstration technique and tests and measurements transfer directly to manufacturer education, platform work and product demonstration — all three of which appear on the academy’s career list.

The academy publishes its NACCAS Annual Report results, and they are good. From the most recent report: a 78.00% graduation rate, a 100.00% licensure rate and an 86.00% placement rate. Those are institution-wide figures across all nine programmes, not this programme alone.

It also publishes on-time completion programme by programme, and does not hide the bad rows. On-time is defined as 18 months for full-time students and 24 months for part-time. Across the Merritt Island campus: Cosmetology 12 of 20 (60.00%), Massage 9 of 10 (90.00%), Full Specialist 14 of 16 (87.5%), Manicuring/Nail Extensions 6 of 6 (100%), Skin Care 12 of 15 (80.00%), Teacher Training 0 of 0 (N/A), Restricted Barber 7 of 9 (77.78%), Barber 0 of 1 (0.00%). Several of those denominators are small enough that one student moves the percentage by ten points or more — read the counts, not the rates.

Placement help is offered and cannot legally be guaranteed. The academy assists at no additional charge, posts job openings it receives from salons and other organisations, and periodically invites local salons in for recruitment seminars. It states explicitly that it does not guarantee placement directly or indirectly, and that the law prohibits any school from guaranteeing placement as an inducement to enrol.

Pay, from the academy’s own table of 2025 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures (annual / hourly / 2024–2034 outlook), excluding tips and gratuities:

The academy’s own list of careers open to its graduates runs wider than the chair: salon owner, salon operator, school owner, school director, cosmetology teacher, platform artist, make-up artist, hair colourist, cosmetologist, hairstylist, trichologist, manufacturer’s representative, product demonstrator, research and new-product testing, beauty editor, technical writer, spa therapist, work in a chiropractor’s office, barber and restricted barber.

You will be teaching real students in a real school. 30 hours observing, 50 assisting and 100 teaching, inside a nine-programme campus with a public clinic floor. That is the substance of the programme and the reason its schedule has to fit around other people’s classes.

What you are awarded, precisely. The catalog’s graduation-requirements section says that on completing the required clock hours with a C or better in practical and academic work, and clearing all fees, “the student will be issued a Certificate of completion by the school”. Two of the nine programme write-ups — Barber and Restricted Barbering — instead say a diploma is awarded. The graduation-requirements section is the governing statement and is what is recorded here.

And one policy that costs you time but is to the academy’s credit. Florida law — the Cosmetology Act, Statutes 61G5-18.001 and Section 477.019, and the Barber Statutes 61G3-16.001 and Section 476.114 — permits a school to certify a student as qualified to sit the licensing examination after 1,000 actual hours. The academy states in capitals that it WILL NOT certify any student before they have completed every hour they enrolled for. If you were counting on testing out early, you cannot here.

One campus, and the catalog inventories it. The Academy of Cosmetology—Merritt Island is a 10,000 square foot facility at 2088 N. Courtenay Parkway, Merritt Island, Florida, with 68 working stations on the clinic floor: 44 cosmetology stations, a barber area with 10 chairs, 4 manicure stations and 10 pedicure stations.

Beyond the clinic floor there are 4 classrooms, a dispensary with laundry, a faculty office, an admissions office, a reception area, inside and outside break areas and six rest rooms. The skin care area has 7 private bays with facial and microderm machines, a large wet spa room, a scrub area, a laundry room and storage. The massage area has 6 private bays, its own classroom, a scrub area and a large storage room.

That inventory is worth reading against the programme you want: the school is genuinely equipped for all nine, and the skin care and massage facilities are separate from the salon floor rather than carved out of it.

Opening hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. — the school is closed Sundays and Mondays. Student schedules run 9:00 a.m. to between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m.; Massage Therapy runs 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Every enrolled student must attend at least 16 Saturday hours per month. The lunch period is half an hour.

A clinic open to the public. The academy runs its clinic floor for real clients under licensed instructor supervision, which is where the practical service counts in every curriculum below come from.

Forty years in one town, under one owner since 1986. The Merritt Island school was bought by its present owner in 1986 and operates as a division of Sheer Success, Inc. The academy describes itself as having trained beauty, barbering and wellness professionals for over 40 years.

Grading is a single 75 per cent bar, in theory and in clinic. Students receive a numeric grade in both, and an overall average of 75 per cent is required for graduation. A = 93–100, B = 84–92, C = 75–83, D = 66–74, F = 0–65. Seventy-five per cent is also the minimum for satisfactory academic progress and the minimum on the state examination.

You may retake a failed examination once — and the second grade stands even if it is lower. That is the academy’s published rule, and it is unusual enough to be worth knowing before you sit one unprepared.

One clock hour means 60 minutes of supervised, directed instruction, breaks included. Full time is 25–40 hours a week; part time is 16–24. The academy offers no distance education — it says so in one line, and for a hands-on trade that is a feature rather than a gap.

Student records are kept permanently, and for at least a year for anyone denied entry. The academy publishes a privacy notice covering the non-public personal information it collects — name, address, social security number, assets and income — and an opt-out coupon for disclosure beyond the parties entitled to it.

Complaints have a published route with a deadline on it: in writing, signed and dated, to the school’s P.O. Box; reviewed by the President, Director, Financial Aid Administrator and location manager; a written response within 30 business days; and after that, NACCAS or the Commission for Independent Education.

Books and equipment become yours and stay your responsibility — you are expected to replace lost or broken articles. Anything left on the premises more than 30 days after graduation or withdrawal becomes the property of the academy.