Guide · checked October 22, 2026

Paid school vs free routes: every route, priced the same way

Our free-training guide explains when “free” is real. This page prices the four routes side by side, using the full stack from the true-cost guide — tuition is never the whole bill: add books, uniform, background check, physical, and CPR card ($75–$350), plus the exam itself ($97–$216 across the dataset).

Route	Out of pocket, day one	Out of pocket, month twelve	The real price
Pay a school yourself, no facility job after	$500–$2,500 tuition + stack + exam	Everything you paid	Full price, full freedom — you owe nobody a shift.
Pay a school, hired by a nursing facility within 12 months	Same as above	$0 in the end — 42 CFR 483.152(c) requires your training costs back, pro rata across the year (Minnesota: in full at 90 days)	Cash flow, not cost — you front the money and claim it back. The route almost nobody takes because almost nobody is told.
Facility trains you	$0 — a facility may not charge an aide it employs (or has offered employment to) for training or the exam	$0	Commitment: many programs expect a work period afterward, and leaving early can trigger repayment terms in the employment agreement. Read that paper, not the brochure.
Public money (workforce boards, state grants, funded college cohorts)	$0–low	$0–low	Availability: local, cyclical, shortage-area dependent. Real when the funding source is named; a second look when it isn't.

How to choose, honestly

Already know a facility will hire you? Route 2 turns the school's price into a loan you repay yourself out of the facility's obligation — just diary the 12-month hire deadline from your completion date; it is a cliff, not a slope. The decoder computes your figure from your dates.
No job lined up and speed matters? Route 1 with eyes open — and negotiate from the full stack, not the tuition headline.
A facility program offers you a seat? Route 3 is genuinely free; your diligence is the work-commitment clause and what happens if you leave at month 4.
“Free” with fees attached? Materials charges, “administrative fees,” or a longer paid program hiding behind the free one — that's Route 1 in a costume, at Route 1 prices.

The rule behind three of these four routes is the same federal sentence — facilities can't charge their own aides, and self-paid trainees hired in time are owed their costs back. It's spelled out in the pay-back rule guide.