Investment amount to become GUE instructor?

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WhiteSands

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A good friend of mine is a full time OW scuba instructor now with another agency. She was interested in finding out what it costs to become a GUE instructor.

I read on GUE's website that you can start the instructor training once you get a Fundies Tech Pass.

Can anyone advise what is the timeline and cost like after that?

Thanks.
 
I believe the starting point is tech 1 + fundies tech as a prerequisite.
There is a formal IDC as well plus you need to be signed off on teaching all facets of the courses. Best to call GUE for a complete breakdown of the requirements. The IDC per req's are listed under that course on the site.
Timeline is anywhere from a few months to unknown.
 
A friend of mine is a T1 instructor, and his wife told me he spent almost 100K to get there.
 
Wow, that's serious money......

---------- Post added March 21st, 2014 at 01:34 PM ----------

Way more than she could possibly make teaching GUE-F for the rest of her life.

I know some instructors and they seem to be doing quite well, but then they also own a shop and are the distributors for Halcyon gear locally.
Never knew it costs so much though, is it the IDC fees?

I guess it doesn't make financial sense for her to pursue teaching as a full time job under GUE then?
 
I know it is not what Lynne meant to say, but just so there is no confusion, there are not 100K in IDC fees... That being said, the path to becoming a GUE instructor is not a simple one, and T1/C1 an even larger hurdle. Depending on the situation, this can take dedication, time and travel (and the costs associated with that) to build the skills and experience needed to satisfy the requirements.

My (personal) recommendation to your friend if they are serious would be to become skilled GUE diver (assuming they are not already) and build a ton of experience doing real dives at the T2/C2 level, and then revisit the issue if it is still of interest.

regards,
Rob Lee
 
You're going to be at least $15k into gear and another $25k just in the prerequisites and experience dives necessary to qualify as a T1 instructor, not to mention several years of full time dedication to achieve that goal. If your preparation has taken the form of a lifetime of diving, $100k isn't unrealistic at all.

If you're an active diver and are doing T1/T2/Cave dives for your own enjoyment, the costs will have been spread out and you're only looking at another few thousand in training and fees to become a GUE instructor (Depending on if GUE-F - REC3, + T1, etc), plus the continued expense of re-qualifications. If you're near a GUE IE, it could be done relatively expensively. If you have to travel - find a rich widow.

All that said, GUE-F may be the sweet spot for investment... If you game the system.

A GUE-F instructor can, with the same diver-level qualifications + the appropriate endorsements from HQ teach:

GUE Primer
GUE Fundamentals
GUE Doubles Primer
GUE Drysuit Primer
REC 1
REC 2
REC 3
Documentation Diver

A GUE-F instructor could, therefore, teach classes in chunks in roughly the order above (leaving out drysuit and REC1) and reap somewhere around $2500 in tuition fees + roughly $8k in gear sales per student over a 1-2 year period, if they are also a shop owner/partner. It has the potential to be a fantastic income stream- just half a dozen students working on this path could yield $30k- $60k in revenue per year.

Granted, a motivated and well prepared student could just do Fundies and skip to Tech 1, but that seems to be happening less lately.

A Tech 1 instructor will spend a lot more money achieving their certification, but only gains a single course for which they can charge between $1500 and $2500 and sell to a much more limited audience. If they are a shop owner, there are little additional gear sales at this point, and margins on deco gas and trimix fills won't keep the lights on. If the goal is to make $$ and keep the doors open, your effort will be much better spent bringing new divers up through the Primer-Rec 3 grind than on supporting Tech 1 dives and divers.

-B


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
A good friend of mine is a full time OW scuba instructor now with another agency. She was interested in finding out what it costs to become a GUE instructor.

I read on GUE's website that you can start the instructor training once you get a Fundies Tech Pass.

Can anyone advise what is the timeline and cost like after that?

Thanks.

To put some real numbers and experiences to it.

You need to be GUE Tech1 in order to qualify as a GUE Fundamentals instructor.
You also have to have attended the Fundamentals ITC (roughly $3-5000US depending on location etc)
Then you have to intern on a number of real GUE fundamentals classes
through this process you can accumulate a "Signature" - this is a sign off from an IT or IE saying that you are ready for a final evaluation
Then you take your final evaluation with an IE. This must be a real class that you organise/teach.

Depending on your location, and the location of available instructors this can be a fast or slow process, and the costs can be very variable.

HTH
John
 
I don't know about other places, but there is not enough demand in the Puget Sound region for someone to make a living teaching Rec 1 through Fundies.

I know a number of people who make a living teaching for GUE. They either sit at the end of a pipeline, as the guys at ZG do (there aren't that many places to take cave classes), or they travel an awful lot. Try to find JP Bresser at home!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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