The Salon Professional Academy

Average annual net price (cost of attendance minus all grant and scholarship aid) paid by students whose families earn under about $30,000 a year (College Scorecard, FY2024-25). This is what the neediest admitted students actually pay, often far below the sticker price. Read it beside the overall net price and the high-income net price: a low figure here signals strong need-based aid. Lower is better.

Average annual net price paid by students whose families earn more than about $110,000 a year (College Scorecard, FY2024-25), close to the full-pay cost since little need-based aid applies. Reported as context: the gap between this and the low-income net price shows how steeply the school discounts by family income. Not a measure of quality.

Average annual net price (cost of attendance minus all grant and scholarship aid) paid by students whose families earn roughly $30,000 to $48,000 a year (College Scorecard, FY2024-25). It is the middle rung of the income net-price ladder: read it together with the low-income (under ~$30K) and high-income (over ~$110K) net prices to see how steeply the school discounts as family income rises. Lower is better.

Average federal Parent PLUS loan per recipient (U.S. Dept. of Education, FSA Direct Loan Dashboard, AY2025-26 YTD). Parent PLUS faces new aggregate borrowing caps under the 2025 budget law; a high average shows how far families currently borrow above other federal aid. Companion to the Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS cap-gap signals. Context, not a quality measure.

Share of first-time, full-time degree/certificate-seeking students who completed within 150% of the program's normal time (about three years for a two-year program), per College Scorecard. The two-year analogue of the six-year rate shown for four-year colleges.

Share of first-time, full-time degree/certificate-seeking students who completed within the program's normal time (100%), per College Scorecard. Reported for two-year and less-than-two-year institutions.

Share of undergraduates aged 25 or older (College Scorecard, FY2024-25). Read as context on the student mix: schools serving many working adults look different on persistence and part-time measures than traditional-age campuses, and neither is inherently better.

Share of undergraduates enrolled part-time (College Scorecard, FY2024-25). Context, not quality: a high part-time share is common at community and commuter institutions and affects graduation-rate comparisons, which are based only on full-time, first-time students.

Share of undergraduates who are women (College Scorecard, FY2024-25). Reported as context on the student mix, not a measure of quality.

Full-time-equivalent enrollment over the full 12-month year (IPEDS 12-month enrollment, 2022-23). Counts part-time students at their fractional load, so it runs above fall full-time headcount and is the denominator used for per-student finance measures.

Students per instructional faculty member (IPEDS, fall 2023). Lower generally means smaller classes and more faculty contact, though the measure mixes undergraduate and graduate teaching and is institution-reported.

Share of students enrolled exclusively in distance-education courses (IPEDS, Fall 2023). Describes delivery model, not quality; online-heavy institutions look different on residential measures.

Percentage-point change in the non-white share of the institution's home-state public high-school graduating class between the class of 2025 (the national peak) and 2037 (WICHE, Knocking at the College Door, 11th ed., public-school race detail). A forward look at who the future applicant pool will be: a positive value means the state's graduating class is projected to grow more racially diverse. Strategic recruiting context, not a forecast of any one school's enrollment, and a college recruits from many states.

How concentrated the institution's degree and certificate output is across academic fields (CIP 2-digit families), as a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index on the latest year's completions: 10,000 means every completion is in one field; lower means output is spread across many. A higher value means the school leans on fewer fields and is more exposed to demand shifts in them; a lower value reflects a broad program portfolio. Shown for institutions reporting at least 100 annual completions. A structural-diversification signal, not a measure of quality.

Projected change in the number of high-school graduates in the institution's HOME STATE from the class of 2025 (the national peak) to 2041, per WICHE's Knocking at the College Door, 11th Edition (Dec 2024). The 'enrollment cliff' is the post-2008 birth decline reaching college age; the U.S. total is projected to fall about 13% over this window. A college recruits from many states, so its home-state projection is an indicative directional signal of feeder-market pressure, not a forecast of that institution's own enrollment.

Share of the institution's measured credentials that are undergraduate certificates, the sub-associate tier that the 2025 budget law's new Workforce Pell Grant makes Pell-eligible from July 1, 2026. Workforce Pell extends the Pell Grant to short-term workforce programs of 150 to 600 clock hours offered over 8 to 15 weeks, subject to state-workforce-board and accreditor approval and to job-placement, completion and earnings-value guardrails. This is an opportunity signal: a higher share means more of what the school already produces could draw new federal grant aid, and the upside is greatest where Pell reliance (shown separately) is also high. Computed as undergraduate-certificate completions divided by all credential completions in the College Scorecard Field-of-Study file (most recent release). Scorecard's 'Undergraduate Certificate' level spans certificates of varying length, so the statutory 150-600 clock-hour window is a subset of this tier, read this as an upper-bound exposure proxy, not a count of qualifying programs. Shown only for institutions that confer such certificates above a minimum completions floor.

Compound annual growth rate of undergraduate enrollment over the years the tool tracks (College Scorecard, roughly 2016-2024). Positive means the school is growing; negative means it is shrinking, the leading indicator of demand stress ahead of the demographic cliff. Banded against the school's peer group.

Compound annual growth rate of net tuition revenue per full-time-equivalent student over the tracked years. A high positive rate means the school's real net price is climbing faster than peers, which can strain affordability and yield. Banded against the school's peer group. Lower is better.

How many distinct US states the school's first-time degree-seeking class is drawn from (IPEDS Residence & Migration, Fall 2022). A higher count signals broader geographic reach and less dependence on any single state's shrinking pool of high school graduates; a low count means the school recruits from a narrow region and is more exposed to that region's demographic decline. Banded against the school's peer group.

Share of the school's first-time degree-seeking class whose legal residence is outside the United States (IPEDS Residence & Migration, Fall 2022). A measure of international reach in the entering class. Neither high nor low is inherently better; it is context for tuition-revenue mix and exposure to visa and geopolitical risk. Banded against the school's peer group.

How many institutions of the same type (same Carnegie classification and control, i.e. the schools competing for the same students) sit within roughly 100 miles. A higher count means a more crowded local market and a harder yield fight, which matters most as the regional pool of high school graduates shrinks; a low count means the school has its catchment largely to itself. Distance is straight-line from campus coordinates. Banded against the school's peer group. Fewer is better for recruiting leverage.

Share of all students taking some, but not all, of their courses at a distance (IPEDS, Fall 2023). This is the hybrid middle ground between the fully online share and the fully in-person share, and it signals how far a school has moved coursework online without going exclusively remote. Context metric, not better or worse. Banded against the school's peer group.

Transfer-in students as a share of all undergraduates (IPEDS, Fall 2023). A high share means the school depends on transfer pipelines rather than first-time freshmen, which changes both recruitment strategy and melt/retention risk. Context metric, not better or worse. Banded against the school's peer group.

Graduate students as a share of total headcount enrollment (IPEDS, Fall 2023). It separates research-intensive universities with large graduate bodies from undergraduate-focused institutions. Context metric, not better or worse. Banded against the school's peer group.

Women as a share of all instructional staff, full- and part-time combined (IPEDS Human Resources, Fall 2023). A gender-composition signal for the teaching workforce. Context metric, not better or worse. Banded against the school's peer group.

Instructional staff who are American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or two-or-more races, as a share of all instructional staff (IPEDS Human Resources, Fall 2023). Nonresident and race-unknown staff are excluded from the numerator. Context metric, not better or worse. Banded against the school's peer group.

The size of the school's home-state high-school graduating class in 2025 (WICHE Knocking at the College Door, public and private combined). It is the near-term in-state feeder market, the complement to the enrollment-cliff projection, which shows the direction that market is heading. Context metric, not better or worse. Banded against the school's peer group.

The civilian unemployment rate in the school's metropolitan or micropolitan area (US Census ACS 2019-23, mapped by the school's federal CBSA code). It is a proxy for local labor demand: a lower rate means a tighter job market, a stronger near-term destination for graduates and a smaller pool of working adults to recruit. It describes the local economy, not the school. Schools outside any metro area are not scored. Banded against the school's peer group.

Projected 10-year (2024-34) change in U.S. employment for the occupations this institution's degrees and certificates feed, blended across its program mix. Built by mapping each CIP 2-digit field to its occupations via the NCES CIP-SOC crosswalk, taking the employment-weighted average of each occupation's BLS-projected percent change, then weighting fields by the institution's latest-year completions. The U.S. all-occupations benchmark is 3.1%, so a higher value means the school's graduates concentrate in faster-growing labor markets. An INDICATIVE field-level signal at broad-field granularity, not a program-specific or graduate-specific projection, and not a placement or earnings guarantee. Shown where at least 50% of completions fall in fields with a coherent occupational mapping and the school reports 100+ annual completions.

A 0-100 composite of student value relative to the peer group: the average of peer percentile ranks for median earnings ten years out, graduation rate, net price (lower counts as better value) and median debt (lower is better). Built only where at least two components are reported. Higher means more outcome per dollar. Banded against the school's peer group.