Why can't you make a living as an Instructor?

[theduckguru]

$50K is used as an example because that's an almost unattainable goal for a dive instructor, even on Maui.

$50K is less than school teachers with masters degree make in some US mainland locations, but the cost of living is considerably less.

 

[Thalassamania]

$50K is more than most school teachers make here in Hawaii, hell ... R.N.s rarely make that much ... the cost of living means nothing what-so-ever.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

$50K is used as an example because that's an almost unattainable goal for a dive instructor, even on Maui.

Let's look at the $50K annual income figure.

Full time is tentatively considered 5 days per week, and a couple weeks off every year would be nice, so we are talking 250 scheduled days per year, which would be $200 per day, but there will be scheduled days when no income happens.

As a resort instructor, my best day ever was in July or August; 4 dives with 4 guests each dive, @ ~$25 per person (~$400), before tips. The owner of the business was my dive caddy that day; I really only had to clean the gear from the last dive. My tips were not as good as other less busy days and I did not push photos because I did not want to work on the computer until midnight, but I am sure my income for the day was well over $500.

As a boat instructor my best day was probably during a week between Xmas and New Years; normal charter followed by private charter. $200 wages and $140 tips, no photo sales on that 6-pac boat back then.

I have may have topped that one day this last summer with one boat trip, tips & photo's, followed by shore dive with 3 or 4 divers who knew gratuity.

There are days with very little tips and weather days with no work; and adding photos makes it at least a 10 hour day, but there are instructors in Hawai'i in the $50K neighborhood. Like many employment fields, it may be more about who you know than what you know.

$50K as a multiple resort bartender in Carmel, CA was only better from a left over food and wine perspective; the cost of living there actually seemed higher for me than on Maui.

 

[Thalassamania]

To me, $50K a year means a possible work year of 2080 hrs. less 160 hours of vacation time, 40 hours of sick leave, 44 hours of holiday ... that means just shy of $28 per hr. multiplied by 1.25 for fringe, so we're at $35 an hour.

I gross $40.00 an hour for teaching, which means I net on the order of $30 an hour, a bit less that a real $50K per year rate of pay.

 

[Crush]

OK Thal, halemanō, and anyone else,

Why go pro?

I am pretty happy with the way things are for me - fit in some dives while on a work trip. Is there any advantage in such a situation to being an instructor or DM? I can't see it... How much does it cost to go from AOW or MSD to a PADI DM or instructor (on average, just a guess) assuming that you have the whopping (insert sarcasm) 100 dives? What does it cost to maintain PADI DM/instructor status and insurance (assuming you pay it yourself)?

 

[Thalassamania]

I think that going "pro" (the very word is a joke to my way of thinking) in today's world is rather meaningless, I know that I would not have done so if it had been the same way back in the early 1970s as it is today. My Instructor's card was only my second card and my progression to CD cost me nothing in $. Then when you add in a lifetime membership (no dues) and the fact that the University carried it's own $5 million teaching liability (no overpriced dive agency insurance), well ... it was a very different world.

 

[rjack321]

The question is? How did we teach our consumers to de-value SCUBA instruction so greatly.

Maybe because shops accepted the pricing structure dictated by (some of the big) gear manufacturers and then the only way they could compete was to underbid on instruction. Continuing to sell courses all the way through to "instructor" helped their bottom lines too. So now there's a glut of instructors all competing for the "priviledge" of teaching. With only a few dives to their names and no reputation beyond the plastic in their wallets they compete with each other on price too. Until the novelty of teaching for $3/hr wears off and they quit. In the meantime the course director level has blessed dozens of new ones to take their place. The shop's happy since they need budget instructors or their gear+instruction packages don't look so good anymore...

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Why go pro?

I am pretty happy with the way things are for me - fit in some dives while on a work trip. Is there any advantage in such a situation to being an instructor or DM? I can't see it... How much does it cost to go from AOW or MSD to a PADI DM or instructor (on average, just a guess) assuming that you have the whopping (insert sarcasm) 100 dives? What does it cost to maintain PADI DM/instructor status and insurance (assuming you pay it yourself)?

Let's work from the bottom up.

afternoon scooter dive​

Most of the last 8 years my instructor insurance has been covered by my employers. When I have "too many" independent customers I have had to drop the occasional $500 for a year of insurance ($1 million cap?). That is about the cheapest North American instructor insurance, going up to $800 (?).

~5 ft great barracuda, afternoon scooter dive​

High end resort gig's often require $2 million in liability coverage, which of course costs more. Annual membership with the agency costs up to nearly $200, for the agency that has the best marketing; probably cheap as $100 with little marketing.

decommissioned suicide bomber
on a couple buddies 4th OW checkout dive​

My education costs to OWSI were;
AOW..................................$290
AOW book..............................32.50
Rescue.................................370
Rescue book...........................39.99
DM......................................600
DM book................................59.90
MFA.....................................125
MFA book...............................22.90
RDP Wheel.............................41.20
IDC....................................1095
IDC book package..................389.05

.......................................$3065.54 before tax

afternoon scooter dive encounter​

I have never made $50K. The people I see who could be making that as employees have been working that gig for more than 5 years. New instructors are lucky to make $24K, IMHO.

pregnant mom perhaps "showing" her fetus "the human"
end of afternoon scooter dive​

More dive benefits as a resort instructor from my experience. If you want more customers for afternoon dives, you have to stay until the start time of the latest dive; walk-ups can be accepted up to the scheduled time.

~7 ft wingspan Hawaiian sting ray, startled by....​

Then, when no one signs up, every resort (4 out of 4) has been cool with me making an exploration scooter dive. Or come down on a day off when no scooter dives are scheduled and take off.

.....my 30 minute afternoon scooter dive buddy​

Even use a rental kayak to get out to far off reef, with a scooter. And 100 cft's if needed.

well, OK, I was working this dive​

Working for a boat you can fun dive (+1) from the boat on days off, space available; at least you don't have to follow the guide.

I was already living on Maui when I first thought it might be neat to be a dive instructor. I thought working as a dive instructor would get me in the water a lot, often with my camera.

 

[vinegarbiscuit]

This has been an entertaining read.

Diver0001 - funny post on 28 Jan 2010. Like it.

vinegarbiscuit - could your fiance make it if you were not contributing to the household?



I would argue that too many people don't know enough to want to pay the actual cost of a course. Certainly I think that this is true at the basic OW level. Now that I am a few courses beyond basic OW I feel that I am committed to scuba and want to take the right course from the right person, and I am willing to pay the money to do so. Really, who in their right mind would want to take GUE Fundamentals and shell out about $700 for a two-day course? Well, me for one (haven't done it yet). I wouldn't have entertained this when I was just beginning scuba because I didn't know any better.

Many dive shops see basic OW the way the industry sees it - as a way to get people into the shop to buy gear. And now that more and more people are opting to buy gear on-line, that business model is heading south for your LDS.

Goodness, I'd forgotten all about this thread! Talk about a blast from the past.

The answer to your question is no - my fiance couldn't make it (as a dive instructor) without my income. I'm effectively supporting us both, and have been doing so from the outset. Especially when times are bad...for the last month or two, it's been pretty quiet at the shop, so my fiance was lucky to work once or twice a week. There are a couple of 'shoulder seasons' each year, when there are hardly any charters going out...that's just the way it is. During such times, it would be impossible to buy groceries (especially in HI, which is a very expensive place to live) on a OWSI's income, as you can well imagine.

For all those that found a niche as professional divers - in whatever capacity - I am truly happy for you, and may you live long and prosper. That said, I'll be very glad when this 'adventure' (as our friends and families unfortunately persist in calling it) is over. It's been an extremely tough experiment for us both, and not one that I ever care to repeat.

 

[Doriadiver11]

Part 1 of 2:

I have been a SCUBA instructor for over 30 years. I’ve taught courses for NAUI, PADI, TDI, and the YMCA. I have worked as a commercial diver for Oceaneering and have trained and certified people from all walks of life including: housewives, marine biologists, US Marines, Navy Divers, a Hollywood actor, and even a NASA astronaut.
Diving has been one of the greatest passions of my life since before I was old enough to pronounce scuba, yet, this year, I’ve taken the conscious decision to quit teaching diving. It’s not because of age (I’m only 49), or health (I’m in fine shape), or other such reasons. I have decided to quit simply because I don’t believe that the dive industry deserves to have dedicated and passionate instructors who are willing to work for free any longer. I don’t mean this to sound pompous and cynical, as in fact it is literally a heart-breaking decision for me to take this step. For the past 30 years, I have truly LOVED being a scuba instructor. But this industry has NEVER loved me back. In 30 years of teaching SCUBA diving, it has never earned me a nickel. This article is my last-ditch attempt to talk some sense into this dysfunctional industry.

The recreational scuba diving industry (and in particular the dive training segment of the industry) has suffered from a broken business model practically since its inception in the 1960’s. Thirty years ago, in 1981, the year that I first became the world’s youngest NAUI instructor at age 19, dive shops across Florida started offering then discounted $129 “Basic Scuba” courses in an effort to out-compete one another for students. The going price then was about $150 to $175 for a basic course, so $129 was a bargain.

Today, in 2011, 30 years later, I find entry level “on-line” scuba courses being offered for that exact same price or even less. Doesn’t anyone else in this business see something wrong with this ?

Intuitively, dive shop owners realized a long time ago, that the only market for retail dive equipment is certified divers; so their strategy was (and has always been), to certify as many divers as you can and then sell them equipment and air fills to try and make a profit. Dive training has most often been treated as a “loss-leader” product, in an effort to create customers to whom to sell equipment, service, air, and exotic trips.
But it’s the training of divers itself, which is the cornerstone of the recreational dive industry. This, in spite of the fact that dive shops, training agencies, and seemingly everyone running the training agencies treat training as though it’s an inconvenient nuisance on the way to selling gear or trips to divers.
The first casualty of this defective philosophy over the years has been the “independent instructor”. The second casualty has been the continually diminishing quality and training standards allowed by all of the recognized training agencies. I personally am deeply disappointed in NAUI, who historically had built their brand-value in terms of being known as the elite training agency, with the highest standards for all levels of certification, particularly for instructors. Over the past 10 to 15 years, they have followed in the footsteps of PADI and diminished their standards to the point that they are indistinguishable from any of the others. This is unforgiveable.
The “independent instructors” of decades past were the truly experienced and passionate teachers who mostly trained entry level divers through institutions such as the YMCA, or in universities. I counted myself among them, and per NAUI’s then motto; “safety through education”, we were the most devoted to providing “complete” training at the entry level, with a real academic and practical content. We were committed to training and developing COMPETENT certified divers from the very first course. Courses then were 8 or 10 weeks long, and included at least a dozen classroom hours, and at least 20 hours of practical in-water training, BEFORE conducting “check-out” dives. That was a “basic” course.
Unfortunately, providing quality training of that type today is economically impossible unless the instructor is willing to subsidize it. Now, any illiterate moron can spend a few hours going through an on-line picture tutorial, followed by a few more hours in a pool and maybe 2 dives in a lake or quarry with an instructor, and voila, they’re an “open-water diver”.
Dive shops, in order to stay in business, must by definition minimize their cost-basis. With incessant pressure from the industry to keep lowering their prices for training courses, they have systematically eroded training standards to the bare minimum, and now offer “on-line” courses where the only time a student sees an instructor is for 2 or 3 pool sessions, and a couple of so-called “open-water” dives. Students today have little if any opportunity to learn from the experiences of their instructors via the stories we used to tell during the classroom training?
Another dynamic that no one in the retail dive shop business seems to get, is that those same dive shops are competing for retail equipment sales with on-line discounters, while they themselves continue to suffer from high overhead costs, having to maintain expensive capital equipment in order to provide compressed air, gases, or maintaining a swimming pool for training purposes. As such, they are forced to sell their equipment at slimmer and slimmer margins, with inventory turnover increasing to longer and longer periods, further exacerbating their cost-bases. I have seen several shops recently offering to apply the cost of an entry level training course, toward the price of an equipment package sold to the dive student. That shop eventually heavily discounted the price of that package to match an equivalent package from on on-line discounter, and then still applied the open-water course fee to the purchase.
Again, the shop sold the equipment at single-digit margin; while having given the training to the student for free (as a “loss-leader”). Does that dive shop owner not realize that he has lost a significant amount of money by giving away a “perishable commodity” to that customer? An intelligent business manager would eventually realize, that selling cheap or even free training as a “loss-leader” in order to get retail equipment sale business that winds up having little or no margin itself is a recipe for bankruptcy. None of this even considers the hidden cost associated with the RISK OF LIABILITY, an instructor incurs when teaching a scuba course. It is better to walk away from a piece of business that will lose you money, than it is to pay someone for the privilege of providing them with a service , that puts the provider themselves at significant financial risk.



The industry has become a ridiculous joke to those of us who take the sport seriously. Making a mistake during a scuba dive can kill a person, and yet the training agencies (and compliant dive shops selling free or cut-rate training) have sent the message to the market that any 4th grader who’s reached the ripe old age of 10, with a spare weekend, can become a “certified scuba diver”. After thousands of dives over 35+ years, I can tell you that diving accidents really do happen even to very skilled and experienced divers. I have seen a number of people die doing this sport, even ones who followed the rules and did everything right. I don’t know a single 10-year old that has the maturity to deal with an unplanned adverse event underwater that is potentially life-threatening to themselves or another diver.
Today, unknowledgeable consumers who hold an interest in learning to dive, go and research the market only to be provided with unrealistic expectations in terms of what extent of training should actually be required to become competent, as well as what it should cost to obtain that training. As a consequence, people seeking dive training nowadays have come to expect to become certified in a weekend for $100 or less, even if they have no more than a 4th grade understanding of math and physics, are not fit enough to jog more than 5 minutes without collapsing. After all, the industry has bent over backwards to give the market the impression that this is the standard of how dive training can and should be delivered.
The few remaining independent instructors today simply teach cut-rate courses (increasingly over just one or two weekends at most); through a local shop in return for free air, a discount on gear, and perhaps a few bucks for gas. More often than not, they don’t even earn enough to cover the cost of their liability insurance, travel costs, and personal equipment requirements. After more than 30 years of teaching diving myself, I have NEVER, earned enough to cover my costs in delivering first-class training to people engaging in what should be considered a high-risk; highly skill-based sport.
In more than 30 years, the so-called professionals in this industry have learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. In fact, it is this author’s opinion that the recreational SCUBA business has digressed as an industry model. The two most recent changes: 1) lowering the minimum certification age to 10 and 2) offering “on-line” tutorial type courses. These constitute the two biggest mistakes the industry has made in a decade. These changes have by default, required that the market price of entry level training be driven even lower.
The implications to competency and safety notwithstanding; the economic stupidity of this model is what I take particular exception to. The fallacy is in making the assumption that simply lowering the cost of training (or even providing it for free) will actually increase the number of students and encourage more people to become certified divers, and then continue diving for years after certification.
Year after year this assumption has been proven to be absolutely false, but dive shops, training agencies, and even many instructors themselves have continued to ignore reality; and instead have systematically driven the dive industry toward a business model based on this erroneous assumption (In economic theory, this is known as the principle of price elasticity of demand). In principle, the demand for a product or service is not necessarily always dependent upon its price. It depends upon the nature of the product and its purpose. In fact, for some products or services, lowering the price actually causes the market demand for it to contract.
Historically, people who seek out dive training generally DO NOT do so as an “impulse buy”. They generally engage in a thoughtful decision-making process and are motivated to learn to dive by some desire that transcends simple need. Most of the time, it is a desire for adventure; some vision they hold of how experiencing the closeness to nature will enhance the quality of their lives in a way that few other experiences could. Scuba diving is something a person really MUST WANT to do; before he or she will invest time, money, energy as well as assume the physical risks and effort of doing so. That in itself is indicative of the fact that people seeking dive training don’t initially shop for it based on price.
The cost of training should be the least relevant aspect in terms of whether or not someone will decide to become certified to dive, but the actions and attitudes of the dive training agencies and the industry in general has set the precedent to make training the most trivial, cheapest, and least important aspect of the sport. The consequence is that everyone involved in teaching scuba has to practically give it away just to have someone to teach. Sorry, but that does not constitute a respected profession. Even cheap hookers don’t “give it away”.
It’s for that reason that the “market price” for dive training is not primarily driven by “consumer demand”, and therefore is not determined by that demand. In other words, a training course that costs $ 99 per person is not any more attractive to those who want to learn to dive, than a course that is $499 per person. The price simply doesn’t drive the demand. Furthermore, the price charged for dive training, should clearly (at least in-part), be a function of the cost to deliver it. Unfortunately, this has never been the case.
To support my assertions, I would like to offer here some economic facts for you so-called “professionals” in the dive industry, but first let me provide a bit about my own background here for context. Aside from having spent the past 30 years as a part-time dive instructor (part-time by necessity …. since this is no way to actually earn a decent living), I have a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Penn State, a Master of Science degree in Finance and Economics from Purdue, an MBA from INSEAD (the number 2 ranked business school in Europe), and I have spent the past 8 years running an aerospace company with over 500 employees and $150 Million revenue. I’ve published articles and photographs on diving in Sport Diver Magazine, worked in my younger years as a commercial diver in the Gulf of Mexico, and have published trade articles on economics and industry in various publications such as Harvard Business Review, Wall St. Journal, and The Economist. Also over the course of the past 25 years, I have started and sold a successful company, was a partner in a private equity fund, and had spent my first 3 years out of college working as a flight-test engineer for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center in the late 1980’s.
As such, I know a thing or two about technology, economics, and business.
In light of that, here is fact number 1:
Offering CHEAP dive training does NOT increase the number of people who will sign up for that training, nor does it increase the number of certified divers who will CONTINUE TO DIVE AFTER CERTIFICATION.
In fact, offering cut-rate dive training has the exact opposite effect.