Great Cut Academy (Koulutus-Center), Tampere

Great Cut Academy is the hair arm of Koulutus-Center, a private Finnish beauty academy operating since 1985, based on Satakunnankatu in Tampere with a second site in Helsinki. It publishes dated intakes and prices in full across a range of programmes, which makes comparison straightforward.

The dedicated barber programme runs four months, sixteen study weeks, from September to December, at 5,200 euros early-bird or 5,400 standard. The combined barber-hairstylist programme runs nine months across 34 study weeks at 8,500 early-bird or 8,900, and a hairstylist-only route runs five months at 6,200. Online versions of the hairstylist and hairstylist-barber routes run at 5,200 and 7,300 respectively, and combination packages adding nail, lash and makeup training run to nine or eleven months at 9,900 and 12,500 euros. Programmes carry credit values between 16 and 43 study points. One thing to be clear about before paying: the academy describes its training as preparing students for the Finnish vocational qualification in hair and beauty, but no Ministry of Education and Culture licence to award that qualification could be found, so the qualification itself would need to be sat elsewhere, ask directly how and where that happens, and treat its statement about study-grant entitlement as needing confirmation too.