Dive training for college credit?

I'm not sure exactly which forum this fits into better, or what to title it, so here it is!

I'm nearing the end of my last deployment that will fit into my enlistment, so to sum things up for my military career - it's all downhill from here. While I'll still be working every day, since I'm not deploying with my unit again, it's not nearly as essential for me to participate in all of the pre-deployment buildups and training. My chain of command is very supportive of taking advantage of that to earn college credits or technical certifications to set ourselves up for civilian careers after separating from the military, and they're very willing to work with us.

My first thought was to take advantage of this for dive training. I'm stationed in Southern California, and have been trying to advance my training for three years, but it's proven all but impossible working around a military schedule, you never know when you're going to get off, or if you're working weekends, so it becomes far too frustrating both to myself and to LDS's to constantly cancel and reschedule classes.

My chain of command, as I said, is very cooperative and even helpful, even knowing that dive training won't be through a college or likely even accredited. I'm getting hung up on one point. The military offers tuition assistance that's separate from the Montgomery GI Bill, TA pays 100% of tuition and fees up to a set limit per fiscal year which varies from one branch to another. I'm eligible up to $4,500/yr.

Where my command will be willing to give the OK for this, it goes higher up to be approved or denied for TA payments. Does anyone know of any way diving could be covered as a technical certification? TA will pay for things like a commercial drivers license, EMT certification, etc. While I don't expect to make a living off of diving by any means, it is professional certification that I hope and expect to use as a supplement for my career.

I've seen a list of PADI courses suggested for college credit by ACE, but I'm hoping to take DIR-F, and possibly an advanced nitrox course after that.

I'll stop rambling, I'm a bit tired and am running purely on coffee and jelly beans at the moment :crazyeye:, so I apologize for the drawn out post.

I'm not sure about your branch but the AF offers money for technical certifications, such as ASE certs for mechanics, MMI for motorcycle techs, etc. Having looked into it, apparently, it's also available for professional diving certs such as DM or Instructor. Might be worth looking into at your education center. If they tell you know, PM me and I'll get more detailed info. I didn't get it all since I can't do it yet.

You may need to go with an accredited program offered by a college. Those tend to be much more comprehensive than the typical LDS offering.

or commercial diver training?

Hey Cheetah223:

First congratulations on successfully completing your enlistment! Depending on your MOS, nothing you do in civilian world will be as mentally or physically difficult as the things you endured while in uniform.

Now your issue: that's a toughie! When I was in the military, I actually took advantage of the TA program, knocking out a subject here and there. But they were the more, traditional courses, Math, English, and Social Science. I was in a Special Operations unit so deployments were unavoidable but not as frequent when compared to today's actions and the such. The cool thing was the college understood this and worked around out deployment schedules.

Let me toss this in there: when I was home in Washington State last year, I was at my local dropzone. There were AD Soldiers participating in tandem jumps. Upon further inquiry, they had just returned from concurrent deployments and the COC deemed it necessary to supplement the adrenaline the boys had been enduring for so long while in country. If they wanted to progress beyond tandem, then the unit would pay for it. I mention this because maybe your unit could do this for you and scuba, you wouldn't have to use TA (although it doesn't hurt you if you do), and you could get your initial certification at least- and maybe more. Admittedly, there is a difference between skydiving and scuba diving, I prefer the former but I mostly do the latter here lately, but jobs in skydiving are limited, whereas with scuba- well, the sky's the limit?! You get the picture. Thalassamania is who I'd PM for careers and requirements for the underwater world.

I'd like to suggest as a potential short term career becoming a Paramedic and then becoming a dive medical technician. I would not do this forever, although I was a Paramedic for ten years, and I was a military SOFDMT- but they allowed me to progress my education to a higher level. Working in a local chamber would be pretty neat. Pay may be a different issue but if you love it and the schedule is flexible then pay is negligible.

Whatever you decide I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

With kindest regards from North Carolina,
Thomas

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I'm not really interested in commercial diving at all. I've already got my AOW, so I'm also not worried about initial certifications. I'm not trying to use diving as a career, though that would be great. I'm studying to prepare myself to get a degree for mechanical engineering, I've always had an interest in robotics, I built my first ROV when I was 14, so I'm going to try to apply an engineering degree to some form of maritime robots, diving is in my eyes the easiest way to observe the operation of a design you're testing in the environment it's expected to operate. So you see, diving won't be my career, and it will largely remain a leisure activity, I'm just trying to milk the idea that it could help out in a career to help classify the training as a technical certification that could fall into TA benefits.

I tried to find an email for the Learning Resource Center back in 29 Palms, but couldn't hunt anything down online..

I guess to summarize I'm trying to get it to pay for intro-level technical courses to progress to the next step in where I eventually want to take my diving.

Watching this thread, could be useful.

Cheetah223: Bro I hear you. I'm in Iraq right now, waiting to get back to Schofield and I'm starting on my own dive career. I even re-upped to hang around so I should have plenty of time to attain my OWSI.

BTW, I have heard of TA being used to get things like Private Pilot's Licenses and such, so I'm sure there is some loophole allowing TA funds for scuba instruction. I recall the dive shop just outside the post advertising that. But they had a bad rep so I never even stopped by the store to check them out.

Peace,
greg

One of my past Issues of dive training had an add for Hall's dive school they acept VA.

I realize this post is old, but it still comes up as one of the first search results on Google for people searching this topic so I thought I'd shed a little light on the subject for anyone still searching.

For background, I am enlisted in the USMC in Camp Pendleton, CA. and did a lot of research into the topic.

----- TLDR version: You used to be able to use Military TA for Divemaster/Instructor courses, but you can no longer. -----

For quite awhile, local colleges were teaming up with dive shops in the area to provide programs (Divemaster, and Dive Instructor) that catered to active duty military personnel. To my knowledge the only two agencies available were PADI and SSI which strongly correlates to how popular they are in that area. The program was actually pretty awesome, courses were at your own pace and very flexible which worked perfect for participants with hectic training schedules. Generally you could expect to complete one of these programs in 3-6 months.

Tuition Assistance works on a cost per credit as well as an annual cap system ($4,500/yr). Speaking from my standpoint the requirements to enroll using TA were that you needed 1 year time on station/in the "fleet" (so new members would spend time learning their MOS job before going out to take college classes), a minimum ASVAB subscore or waiver, and attend a "college 101" briefing to make sure servicemen/women understood the program and weren't flying blind.

While there is precedent for earning college credit for doing specific classes through PADI, the divemaster/instructor courses do not generally aim for such and don't transfer for much more than obscure general education credits. They do however provide a bonafied certification that can be useful for a job/profession as a divemaster or instructor. Military TA (as well as GI Bill) can be used for such certificates. Unrelated certificates such as a CDL, Microsoft Cert, EMT Certs, etc also fall into this category.

In general, and to keep random people from making up a certificate and accepting TA money, these certificates needed to be verified/accredited by a college or trade school who in turn had to approve the cert course and offer it t the public. The colleges were basically subcontracting the actual teaching of the course to the various dive shops and handling the payment. Coincidentally the tuition cost for either of the dive programs was $4,500 (the same as the yearly allotment for TA per serviceperson) though "course material" costs such as dive equipment/rental and chartered boat dives were to be paid for out of pocket. Depending on a multitude of other factors, students could also apply for supplimentary grants/waivers that were authorized for members which could potentially cover even these out of pocket fees. You were basically able to become a divemaster or instructor for free if you played your cards right. As you can see, this was a very attractive offer for a Marine/Sailor who may not be utilizing that TA money for anything anyway.

This worked well for a few years but as budgets changed, the military started cutting funding for college education and cracking down on the "legitimacy" of certifications. As a unverified side note, a Marine died in a diving accident while using the TA funding during a wreck class at the HMCS Yukon, she is one of 4? divers to perish at that site. There was speculation that this also highlighted the specific program/diveshop and contributed to its closure though I personally believe it was always a budget issue that shelved the program.

As of March 2017, in the Southern California area, the local colleges and dive shops have canned the TA Divemaster/Instructor programs. It may change in the future, so stay updated with your bases Joint Education Center. In the meantime, there are still a plethora of other certifications you can get. sadly SCUBA diving just isn't one of them. While it is still generally possible to use GI Bill benefits to attend a professional diving program, I would personally highly discourage tapping into your military benefits while you are still enlisted and even afterwords using it on one of these programs unless you are very serious about diving as a career.

Hope this was informative or was able to help anyone who was still looking into the issue.

References/ Resources for anyone interested:

Outdated Mira Costa (Southern California Community College) web flyer describing the Divemaster and Instructor courses:
Scuba Dive Master Program
Scuba Instructor Program

Local dive shop outdated webpages describing the program:
Tuition Assistance Program: Open Water – Dive Master :: San Diego's Premier Dive Store and Training Facility :: North County Scuba Center

News stories related:
Tuition assistance picks up scuba tab
Marines Use Tuition Assistance for Mira Costa Scuba Class

Example of a dive program for GI Bill (Not TA):
Discovery Diving - Master Instructor Program

Servicemember death while in TA funded Divemaster program news articles:
Yukon scuba diver died of head injury
Late Diver's Mother Files Lawsuit Against Diving School