• Cosmetology is a trade commonly offered by vocational schools.beautician on job image by Laser from Fotolia.com
  
  Unlike traditional, academic institutions, vocational schools offer students instruction in a variety of trades such as carpentry, automotive repair and cosmetology. The curriculum in these schools is hands-on and practical, not theory-based. Those who want to get quick career preparation, rather than spend years at college, choose to attend vocational schools. Yet while attending vocational school has some benefits, there are also some cons to it.
  
  

Narrow Focus

• Vocational schools prepare students to work in one specific area. That means that the skills learned in vocational school are likely not transferable to another career area. So if students find, after graduating, that the trade for which they went to school is really not something they want to spend the rest of their lives working in, they are back to square one. This is not so much the case with college degrees. Even highly specialized college degrees, such as psychology, offer recipients the ability to work in a number of fields. For instance, someone with a degree in psychology who doesn't want to be a psychologist may find employment as a social worker or psychology teacher.
  
  

Quality of Instruction

• Some vocational schools are completely on the up-and-up about what type of preparation they can offer students. However, the Federal Trade Commission notes that this is not always the case. At many such schools, "the main objective may be to increase profits by increasing enrollment," notes the FTC website. The RWM Vocational Schools Database suggests finding graduates and former students of any vocational school you are considering, and asking them about the quality of instruction and their overall satisfaction with the institution. The state's accrediting commission may also have some information on the school's quality and any complaints lodged against it.
  
  

No Guarantees

• Many people choose vocational schools because these institutions commonly make employment promises. In addition to overstating how in-demand their graduates are, many vocational schools promise to help with job placement. But, according to the FTC, they sometimes don't have the connections to certain businesses and industries that they lead students to believe they have. The result is that a student may shell out a great amount of money to attend a vocational program, expecting to be able to begin working immediately after graduation, but find that a diploma doesn't equal a job.
  
  

Financial Aid

• Not all vocational schools can offer students federal financial aid eligibility, so these schools sometimes steer students into private educational loans with high interest rates. Because many vocational programs are accelerated programs that can be completed in as little as nine to 18 months, students can amass a large amount of debt fairly quickly. If they then learn that they don't want to work in the trade they studied, they are stuck paying for an education that will do them no good.