Steve I believe you are right that the instructor took advantage of the class. I suspect that was done to make a political statement in regards to the way the seats were booked. How ever, being told that you can get certified for x$ comes along with the unspoken condition that the student learn and demonstrate what they have learned. Under that premis no college can be over booked because as long as you pay the tuition you graduate whether you show up or not. Being told the requirements of the course implies you accept having to meet them. For instance in this specific discussion you never told any of the posters of this threads TOS. Do the rules not apply or is it assumed that TOS discussion for each post is not necessary as it is an already accepted concept of the board in general? I will agree that the instructor ahould have said something along the lines that the GROUP booked which booked your class did so without provisions for remedial training as needed in the course fees>
I have to admit that I had a difficult time following your point here, so I may not be responding appropriately. Please correct me if I misunderstood.
There is a HUGE difference between college instruction and the instructional practices of SSI and almost all other agencies.
Most (not all) college instruction is TIME based: they instruct you for a period of time, measure the results of your performance during that period of time, and at the end give you a grade that reflects the degree to which you mastered the material.
Almost all scuba instruction is instead PERFORMANCE based: they keep teaching you until you meet a standard of performance, at which time instruction will cease.
A common description used by educators in comparing the two systems is to say that in traditional education, time is the standard and quality is the variable, whereas in performance based education, quality is the standard and time is the variable.
A better analogy than to college would be to the man who just left my home a few minutes ago after preparing an estimate for radon mitigation. He told me what it would cost me, and he guaranteed that my house would meet radon standards when he was done. If it doesn't, then he has to do whatever it takes to get the job done, all at his cost. I won't be charged another dime.
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Second, lets look at a bigger picture. Even in advanced skills and tech classes true failure is RARE. In a group of 7, sure 1 will likely drop out, 1 might legit "fail", but anymore than that and you are looking at a true statistical anomaly. 7 in one class = scam or horrible instructor.
With an instructor in a typical inland (not resort) dive shop, 1 will drop out every other month or so. No one actually fails a class--they are supposed to keep at it until they pass, however long that takes. When it just isn't working for one reason or another, they come to an agreement to stop trying. That comes in a lot of forms, and it doesn't happen all that often.
Non-thread-highjacking question: Do instructors have to report their pass/fail rate to a governing body? If they do, one would think the unscrupulous would err on the side of making themself look better by passing more students.
If you are working for a shop, your passing rate is definitely known to the shop. On the occasions that I had students drop a class, which wasn't often, I had to have an explanation, and it was usually no problem because it was pretty rare. If I were to go to the shop manager and say that I took 7 students through every skill in a class and decided that none of them had passed and would need to take the whole class over, there would have been a prolonged silence as the manager stared at me in sheer disbelief. Since the scenario is pretty much unimaginable, guessing how long it would have taken before I was fired would be pure fantasy.
