Is there an instructor crisis?

[DiveTucson]

What's the percentage of the instructors you mention that teach tech?

All the folks mentioned teach at least some tech.

 

[DiveTucson]

The OP and pretty much all the posts were about OW instructors though. Teaching CCR and cave/tx is a different story. You can make a living doing that but only in regions people travel to, or places with high population and high income.
You guys are reliant on PADI type OW instructors... If PADI/SSI were to stop or significantly reduce the numbers of OW divers they pump out, you'd be out of business in no time. Out of a few hundred OW divers produced, 1 or 2 (if that) will end up being your customer.

If it weren't for the hobby instructors and the instructors in Mexico, Thailand, etc. that work full time for 800 bucks a month, there wouldn't be much of a dive industry left.

That I disagree with. If you look at OW instruction in the US where it seems everyone is an OW instructor. Two things need/should happen but won’t.

The barrier to entry to become an instructor needs to increase (this may be happening anyway due to insurance) and instructors need to charge accordingly for their time.

The entire industry is “broken” in a way but it has been self created and self inflected for years with shops offering OW training as a loss leader and pushing all their clients to “Go-Pro” and more.

 

[berndo]

That I disagree with. If you look at OW instruction in the US where everyone is an OW instructor. Two things need/should happen but won’t.

The barrier to entry to become and instructor needs to increase (this may be happening anyway due to insurance) and instructors need charge accordingly for their time.

The entire industry is “broken” in a way but it has been self created and self inflected for years with shops offering OW training as a loss leader, pushing all their clients to “Go-Pro” and more.

What part you disagree with? What you describe is not an US thing. That's everywhere.

The industry is producing so many OW instructors because it's making money. As a OW IT/CD you make way more money training instructors than divers. The agencies make membership fees and sell their ****** and very pricey instructor training materials and as a bonus get a free new sales person (instructor) for their stuff. It also produces cheap labour for all the PADI type shops aboud the world.

That whole 'go-pro'm part of the industy is a borderline scam or pyramid sceme or whatever you wann call it. The problem is that it works great for the agenies and the ITs/CDs and they are the ones who run the ship.
It's not 'broken' from an ITs and agengy point of view. There is zero incentive for them to raise the barrier of entry for instructors.

 

[rhwestfall]

The shops here grind out DMs here on a way too high rate which I speculate they do to keep a saturated market, thus "pay" stays low... Additionally we are a 4 month a year dive locale. The whole thing is out of balance.

Add to that the trend to travel for "better diving" (you need to go on a trip to Key Largo to do your advanced) and it is no wonder the local diving industry is collapsing.

Skyrocketing costs, an aging out group that were passionate, a less motivated generation....

It isn't looking pretty....

 

[SlugLife]

I was working for a local shop that would only pay in gear credit, store credit, etc.

yikes.

I was the only instructor who had a problem with this and I bet there were 20+ instructors on the roster for that shop and there still are probably 20* today.

This is probably an example of selection bias. If there are 100 instructors in total, 81 have a problem with that policy, 20 accept an offer, you'll end up with 19 who are okay with those terms, and 1 who is not. If you look at my post about artists, you'll see a similar phenomenon. Essentially a business-man doesn't care about how many artists reject an absolutely terrible and explotative offer, so long as there are a few who will accept. Scam artists work the same way, it doesn't matter there are 99 people who walk away, only that they manage to get that one or 2 suckers.

edit: I learned you need to be quick and ruthless at figuring out if you're dealing with one of these exploiters and rejecting them. If they can't give you a reasonable $ range quickly, it's a red flag. This is generally good advice outside diving or being an artist, and works for full-time or freelance jobs. For example, in my current career, the interview process tends to be extensive, time-consuming and frustrating (involving various tests, phone interviews, on-site interviews, etc). I've turned down dozens of interviews when they can't give me a salary-range.

All the other instructors were mainly retired professionals from other industries or teaching for “fun” and didn’t need and/or even want the income.

I'm in a similar position (minus, being an instructor). The money I'd get from a dive-shop instruction job would never be a tiny fraction of a job in my career. However, I would never work for such a shop for ethical reasons.

Why should I be working for free (or near free), when (1) the shop and dive agency are making good money and (2) the persons I'm trying to help are being charged good money. If I'm to work for free or near-free, then the customer shouldn't be charged $450 for an open water class. For example, if someone started a non-profit, that had free training materials and taught basic Open Water classes, and required customers only be charged basic costs. I don't think that would have much negative impact on the ability of full-time professionals to make a living, and it might even expand the market.

edit: I'm not sure I'd even work for this non-profit idea for a few reasons, including devaluing the time of instructors. I do still like the idea of "open source training materials." (similar to software open-source).

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

The shops here grind out DMs here on a way too high rate which I speculate they do to keep a saturated market, thus "pay" stays low... Additionally we are a 4 month a year dive locale. The whole thing is out of balance.

Add to that the trend to travel for "better diving" (you need to go on a trip to Key Largo to do your advanced) and it is no wonder the local diving industry is collapsing.

Skyrocketing costs, an aging out group that were passionate, a less motivated generation....

It isn't looking pretty....

It isn’t looking pretty for any part of the dive industry. Just look at every part including gear manufacturers, dive resorts, charter boats, etc.
All of them are now or soon will be suffering.
Look at how many gear brands there are now as opposed to 30 or 40 years ago. How are they all supposed to continue selling gear, to who?
Unless maybe diving is really taking off in developing countries or in Europe? It sure isn’t here.
I think the drop off in instructors is only a symptom of a much bigger problem. Basic economics will dictate the path that the sport will take. No instructors, no new OW students. You can’t sell gear or dive trips to people who aren’t there. You can’t count on the old timers because they are well, getting old. Perhaps this thread should have been titled “The decay of diving”?
One interesting thing I’ve noticed; every dive shop I’ve ever set foot in the owner was never involved in teaching any classes. They always had people for that. That may have to change. Let the owners work for $8 hour on their off time and see how they like it.

But the discussion will wander and eventually touch on all relevant points.

 

[SlugLife]

One interesting thing I’ve noticed; every dive shop I’ve ever set foot in the owner was never involved in teaching any classes. They always had people for that. That may have to change. Let the owners work for $8 hour on their off time and see how they like it.

A businessman understands the correct accounting to use for time and materials.

3-hour class, $60, is $20/hour, right? NOPE! You need to "bill" for everything. Time driving, marketing, time talking to prospective customers, time on follow-up classes on people who nearly passed, time driving to/from the shop to get fills, time spent on paperwork, time taking additional classes, time doing research. Money for gas, fills, equipment maintenance, park fees, pool fees, supplies of any kind (even pencils or mask defog), money for taking classes, insurance costs, or even additional costs of eating out. Because I'm not an instructor, I'm probably missing a dozen things from both lists.

An owner doesn't have to do the class, to know they'd be earning -$8/hour (that's negative $) with just back-of-the-napkin calculations.

---

I'm reminded of my friend who likes to do mini dive-jobs. These jobs are almost always losses, but since it's his dive boat, I have little choice but to tag along. For example, a job to retrieve an item someone dropped. Often the item location is approximate, in murky waters, or at an impractical depth, meaning almost no chance we'd find it. Or an anchor-retrieval, which turns out to be tangled in dozens of other anchors, steel cables, and zero-vis. Even if we succeed, we still end up wasting another 60 to 90 minutes, meeting the guy at a dock. Those 60-90 minutes mean we might end up missing a dive, or the dive-shop is closed by the time we're done (and neither of us live close to a fill station).

Instead of that, we could have hit a location where sunglasses, iphones, etc are frequently dropped, and often finding a bunch of sunglasses, with 1 to 6 of them being worth more (each) one of those bounties.

 

[NW Dive Dawg]

Whatever a standard is, be it high or be it low, it is a "minimum" requirement. That is what the words mean.

Under PADI requirements, a student is supposed to achieve "mastery" as defined in the standards. The word "mastery" in the standards uses the educational definition of the term, as used in the concept called Mastery learning, which is the basis of almost all scuba instruction today.

If you did what you described when you instructed, you did not meet standards as an instructor.

Just to be clear.....in blue below is a cut and paste of EXACTLY what I posted::

"The issue for me was that PADI Standards were the "minimum" requirement for certification and my personal standards were more geared towards "mastery" of skills rather than simply "getting through them". And I admit that my personal evaluation / definition of the term "mastery" may have subjectively been at a higher level than some others."

And then here is definition of the term MASTERY that you posted:

During confined and open water dives, mastery is defined as performing the skill so it meets the stated performance requirements in a reasonably comfortable, fluid, repeatable manner as would be expected of a diver at that certification level.

There is no way that two different instructors will have the exact same "expectation" of the skills performed at the certification level. And even more important, no two instructors have the same expectation of what is considered to be "reasonably comfortable". Some instructors simply have higher expectations than others and there is no getting around that fact. This does not mean that they did not meet standards.

 

[berndo]

Unless maybe diving is really taking off in developing countries or in Europe?

What do you mean? I think what happens in the States doesn't matter all that much to the international dive industry. Outside of Mexico and the Caribbean Merican divers always seem to be a tiny minority. I think most customers that travel for diving are Europeans.
I don't think I've ever been to any dive destination that wasn't packed with Europeans. Even Mexico is full with Brits, Germans, Dutch, etc.
Same with all the big gear brands. Most seem to be European for some reason. It's really only the agencies that are from the States.

It would be really interesting to see how many certifications are sold in what country.

 

[boulderjohn]

I don't get why you are so against reform to improve dive training. Do you (or anyone) really think the status quo is healthy?

This is certainly the most disingenuous post in the history of ScubaBoard. I think I would have to rank among the participants here who has worked the hardest to improve dive training, and I would even argue I have been among the most successful. And you know that!

1. Before 2011, almost all beginning OW instruction done by almost all agencies was done with students overweighted and on the knees. I had been experimenting with neutrally buoyant, horizontal trim instruction for several years. I put together a team of people I felt would be like-minded, and we worked together to create an article advocating that approach. I submitted it to PADI and then went through a long email exchange to first convince then to publish it. I then worked with them on the final draft that was published in 2011.

Since then, several agencies are close to requiring that approach. PADI advocates it, but I have been openly critical of them for not doing a better job of promoting it. I have promoted that tirelessly in FaceBoook groups and on ScubaBoard.

2. Several years ago I was bothered by teaching on overhead environments, especially in both the OW course and the wreck course. I started a discussion with PADI headquarters to convince them that their language was in fact harmful and deceptive. They finally agreed and asked me to suggest new language. I provided it. They asked for permission to use it in coming course rewrites, and they published a preview in their professional journal a couple years ago.

3. As a tech instructor, I was disturbed by the fact that the standards for the Trimix class required students to use a deep stops strategy at a time when thinking was shifting on that approach to decompression. I sent PADI information showing that shift in thinking. They replied that I had permission to skip that requirement, and a few months later they published a directive to all trimix instructors telling them that deep stops were no longer a requirement. I then worked with Simon Mitchell to write an article detailing that changed thinking, which they published.

4. As a career educator, I have written countless responses in threads, including in the Instructor to Instructor forum, in which I explained how instructional theory relates to best practices in scuba instruction. You have openly praised some of that and said you have applied it to your own instruction. I have not done a good enough job explaining it obviously, since one of your last posts shows that you still do not understand the basic concepts of mastery isntrruction.

So my attempts to improve the industry ae done by working with the agencies, showing them the value of a proposed change, and convincing them to make that change. Can you name anyone else on ScubaBoard who has accomplished more than I described in this post?

What about you? Your strategy for change is to write post after post after post after post after post on ScubaBoard saying that agencies and instructors suck. You wrote a post a year or two ago in which you said all instruction done through WRSTC agencies suck. (For those who don't know, WRSTC agencies certify more than 99% of all divers.) What does all this repeated mocking of agencies and hard working instructors accomplish? Who of any importance do you think is listening to your rants? Constant whining accomplishes absolutely nothing.