Learn the trade in the trade.
Swarthy's is a California State–approved barbering & cosmetology apprenticeship sponsored out of downtown Pasadena. You earn your license on the floor of your sponsoring shop, under its licensed trainer — paid, supervised, and licensed at the end. Not a classroom simulation of the craft. In the craft.
Start Here
Find your path in
five questions
Most people who want this don't know whether they're eligible, what it costs, or where to begin. This tells you — before you fill out anything.
Are you 18 or older?
Swarthy's sets its minimum age at 18 — a standard approved by the Division of Apprenticeship Standards and the State Board.
Do you have an SSN or an ITIN?
The State Board accepts either a Social Security Number or an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. You do not need one to be a citizen.
Which license are you after?
Both run 3,200 hours on the job. The classroom track and the exam differ.
Have you attended a licensed beauty or barber school?
This matters more than most people expect.
Do you already have a shop willing to sponsor you?
An apprenticeship needs a licensed trainer at a real establishment. If you don't have one, that's normal — and it's the part we handle.
The Real Question
How long will
this actually take?
3,200 hours is an abstraction. Weeks on a calendar are not. Move the slider to your real schedule and see the date you'd be eligible to sit for the state exam.
California caps apprentice credit at 42.5 hours per week and requires a minimum of 32. Both numbers are set by regulation, not by us.
This is your sponsoring shop’s calendar, not ours — count the weeks it is actually open and you are actually on the floor. Holidays, closures and your own time off all come out of it. Classroom Mondays do not: shops are closed Mondays, so RSI costs you no on-the-job hours.
Gold = hours accumulated. The line is the earliest date the state will let you test, no matter how fast you log hours.
Every month you wait moves that date by a month. The clock does not start until you do.
The Program
Two licenses.
One classroom.
Barbering
Clipper architecture, straight-razor shaving, fades and taper theory, beard design, men's cutting and styling — trained on real clients from the first supervised week, not on a mannequin head.
You work under a licensed trainer who may supervise no more than two apprentices at a time. That ratio is regulation, and it's the entire reason an apprenticeship teaches faster than a room of thirty students sharing one instructor.
Every hour is logged daily — dates, hours, and the specific work processes performed. That record is what the state accepts as proof of your training.
Cosmetology
The full board-approved scope: cutting, chemical texture and colour, scalp and skin, styling, and the chemistry underneath all of it.
Cosmetology and barbering apprentices train at their own sponsoring establishments, but they sit in the same RSI classroom. That crossover is deliberate — the two disciplines share anatomy, sanitation, and client handling, and practitioners who understand both are worth more on day one of their careers.
Same supervision ratio, same daily record-keeping, same written exam at the end.
Related Supplemental Instruction
The classroom half of the apprenticeship. RSI is delivered under the Los Angeles Unified School District as the local education agency — Swarthy’s schedules it, tracks your hours and holds the compliance record.
Class is every Monday, 9:00 to 1:30 — the day the shops are closed, so it costs you nothing in on-the-job hours. National holidays and the month of December are off. There are no makeup sessions, and that is deliberate.
So do the arithmetic before you enrol. 320 hours at four hours a session is 80 Mondays, and only about 88 fall inside the program's two-year window. That leaves you roughly eight absences for the entire apprenticeship — illness, emergencies, car trouble, all of it. We would rather tell you that now than at month nineteen.
Content covers law and regulation, infection control and sanitation, chemistry, anatomy of skin, scalp and hair, and exam preparation — with a running 90% assessment average required before you're advanced to sit for the board.
For Shop Owners & Trainers
You can train an apprentice in your own chair. We handle the state paperwork, the RSI scheduling, and the compliance record. The trade itself is taught in your chair, by you.
To train, you need a current California licence in the discipline you're supervising, good standing with the Board, no outstanding fines, and no disciplinary action in the last two years. You may supervise no more than two apprentices at a time.
Your obligations to the apprentice are real: they're your employee, paid at least minimum wage, covered by your workers' compensation. They cannot rent a station or work on commission. In exchange you get a trained hand in your shop who learns your standards, not someone else's.
Talk about hosting an apprenticeProgram fee
What it costs,
on one page
Most programs in this category won't publish a number. We will, and we'll show you the payment schedule before you ever speak to anyone.
The program fee is paid as a down payment at enrolment plus twelve monthly instalments. The final instalment is adjusted so the total lands exactly on the program fee — no rounding drift, no surprise balance.
The $7,000 figure is held through 01/01/2027. Sign before that date and it is locked for your full program, however long you take to finish.
State fees are separate and paid directly to the Board of Barbering & Cosmetology. They are the same wherever you train. Both figures are printed on the Board’s own forms — $25 on the apprentice licence application, $125 on the Application for Examination and Initial License — and the Board can change them, so check the form when you file.
You are paid at least minimum wage for every hour you work during the apprenticeship. Factor that against the sticker price — it's the reason this route exists.
Honest Comparison
Apprenticeship
or beauty school?
School is the faster route to a licence. It is not the faster route to being good, and it is not free. Here is the whole trade-off — including the parts that cost us enrolments.
| Apprenticeship (here) | Licensed beauty school | |
|---|---|---|
| Hours required | 3,200 on the job + 320 classroom | 1,000 hours of instruction |
| Time to licence | 21 months minimum, up to 2 years | Often 9–12 months full time |
| Do you get paid? | Yes — employed, at least minimum wage, workers' comp covered | No. You pay for the privilege of practising |
| Who you work on | Paying clients, from early on, supervised | Mannequins first, then clinic-floor clients |
| Supervision ratio | Maximum 2 apprentices per trainer | Commonly 20–30 students per instructor |
| Cost | Program fee, offset by wages earned throughout | School fees, often financed, no offsetting income |
| Where school wins | Slower. Requires you to hold a job down for two years | Faster, more structured, federal aid often available |
| Hour transfer | Hours logged at a licensed school do not transfer into an apprenticeship. Choose your route before you put more hours in. | |
Empirical
Why, not
just what
A standing series on the science under the craft, written for people already working behind the chair. Published free, and separate from the program’s instruction.
The scalp is not a backdrop
Five layers, a working organ, and everything it tells you before the first clipper guard touches skin.
Read → Empirical No. 4The razor line
A close shave is a controlled wound to the skin barrier. Blade angle and direction decide whether it heals clean or becomes an ingrown hair.
Read → Empirical No. 7The six areas the Board actually inspects
Seven of the fifteen violations the Board cites most often are about disinfection and tool handling. Not one is about cutting.
Read →Board Readiness — free
Study the exam before you
commit to anything
Thirty questions across six domains, mapped to what the Board actually enforces — infection control, sanitation, chemical safety, bloodborne pathogens, skin and scalp, nails. Study each one, then sit a mock exam and see where you stand. Every answer explains itself and cites the regulation rather than asking you to memorise it.
Enrolment
Orientation is the
first Monday, 8am
Held monthly at 18 N Marengo Ave. Three steps, and only the last one needs your documents.
The clock does not start until you do. The sooner you start, the sooner you finish.
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Tell us you're coming — 90 seconds
Name, how to reach you, which licence you're after. No documents, no Social Security number, nothing sensitive. We reply within one business day with your orientation date.
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Hold your seat with the down payment
$3,000, paid securely through Stripe. It applies in full against the $7,000 program fee, and locks that figure for you through 01/01/2027. Pay after we've spoken — never before.
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Bring your ID to orientation
Your State Board apprentice forms get completed with a person, in the office, in about ten minutes. We deliberately do not ask you to upload a Social Security number or a photo of your ID to a website.
Step 02 — once we've spoken
Down payment, applied in full toward the $7,000 program fee. Card or bank transfer, handled entirely by Stripe — your payment details never touch our systems.
Pay the down paymentQuestions first? Call 626-378-2887 — a person answers — or email inquiries@swarthys.org.