I'm not sure I'm buying into the comparison between college and SCUBA instruction, at least not 100%. For me, SCUBA instruction (expectations and 'contractual' agreements) are more along the lines of my grad school experience rather than undergrad. During undergrad, the student/prof relationship was very hit or miss, particularly in 'weed out' classes-during the third day of my first Chem E class, Material and Energy Balances, the prof looked at a fellow student and told her 'If you don't know the answer to that by now, I hear Burger King is hiring.' Kind of set the tone for the class. A year or so later I was in a Heat Transfer class (first day) [and yeah, we engineers take ALL the fun classes] and after an hour with the prof I was LOST, and not looking forward to that class at all. As it happened, one of my fraternity brothers was in the same class in the same room immediately after me, with a different prof, so I decided to stick around and see if she was any better. 500% change. I couldn't get my transfer form completed fast enough. Ended up loving the class, got an A, and to this day still use those principles in my everyday work and most importantly, I understand them.
In grad school, there tended to be more of an easy-going, work as a team type atmosphere to make sure that everyone finished the program. Not by relaxing standards, but by both profs and students putting forth the energy to make sure everyone 'got it' and truly passed the class. Now, maybe there are instructors out there that see OW more as an undergrad atmosphere rather than grad level work, but I'm not sure that should necessarily be the case.
In any case, I think the biggest parallel between the academic setting and the SCUBA setting, particularly in my experience, is that the instructor makes all the difference in the world, and I think that the GroupOn/LS setup probably does those who are truly interested in making SUCBA a long term hobby a disservice-not trying to bash the OP, but I agree that, by and large, the people that signed up using the GO/LS program are, in general, trying to tick a box on a bucket list to be able to they they've been SCUBA diving. Like the majority of the posts in the 'Which agency' thread, the instructor makes or breaks the experience-and, unfortunately, in this case, it seems like it broke it.
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Just re-read that, and man, I'm wordy this morning. Sorry about that guys...anyway, the other thing that kind of differentiates SCUBA from academics is the lack of a practical exam in school (trade schools excluded, of course). As the OP noted, they all passed the academic portion; it was the practical assessment they all (allegedly) failed.