I used to own a dive shop and absolutely hated it when someone came in saying they were an 'Advanced Diver' and had 15 dives under their belt. These days anyone can take another few dives after initial certification and get that 'advanced' label on their certification card. It is a shame, a semantic and psychological illusion. They should never call it Advanced. Call it 'additional training certification' or some such label but, please, not Advanced. !
Steve, the semantic 'myth' is propagated by the agencies. I do believe PADI is being asked to relook the word 'Advanced' - AID is the most likely replacement?
That said, PADI is probably one of the greatest marketing organisations in the recreational dive industry to date. Issue could be is when marketing hits the operationally rubberized road. But as a business, it could be that much harder to sell you an OW course for $600 and an AOW for $500 compared to "Hey buddy, I'll teach you all there is to know about recreational diving and it'll only cost you $25,000 and about 2 years with 500 dives included in your package. Accommodation, meals, equipment, insurance, booze and gratuity excluded but appreciated."
To be fair, on the other hand SSI is an ISO certified agency. Means that paperwork is religiously checked off (the relevant ISO rating). Which also may not equal to good level of appropriate skills passed on to the diver.
IMHO, straddling both agencies ... they're both in a race to gain market share. What do you think is likely to happen to standards and training? Both agencies are about 'SELLING' and 'ENSURING PAPER WORK IS SIGNED OFF' in thetr respective instructor courses. Somehow instructing skillsets are magically acquired at the levels prior to instructorship. 1 rescue eval over 2 days of ITC/IDC, maybe 2 minutes of identifying mock problems with mock students over 2 days?
Transliteration of a old chinese idiom: when the top is not straight, the bottom is crooked.
Then again perhaps to be 'fair,' the agencies have somewhat dumbed down the standards. But without some 'diluting' in cost, course and content, one would not be able to sell diving to those with the attention span of a gnat? Someone else posted elsewhere in SB the equivalent: "The diver/customer is going to go down the road to the shop who is selling the same looking course to them for $20 cheaper."
I observe from this thread that the discussion still revolves around what the industry standards are in relation to the semantics of certification. RSTC / WRSTC should be the body that's in here reading all these. But RSTC/WRSTC are not here I guess because they believe that the majority of people who want to learn diving should be able to dive with today's standards.
With regard to 'independent' divers ... out here in Asia we are so swamped with dive pros from all over the world that for generations divers expect a guide as part of their dive package. Goes to show the mentality shift in
1) instructional direction as interpreted variously due to ambiguity built into training standards for legal CYA purposes
2) changing customer orientations,
3) changing / selective business orientation (in some cases its more about the divers having a 'good time' rather then learning properly aka you only have to stand up and jump into the water all else is taken care off for you from set up to putting on and in some cases even taking off in the water before you climb up the ladder). Can't clear your mask? No problem, we provide you full face mask. Can't fin properly, our dive guide will hold your hand. Can't clear your regulator, no problem we will purge it for you. Can't use your BCD, don't worry, your dive guide will control your bouyancy for you.
Perhaps discussions like these are also a possible sypmtom of the 'Let's get it done proper with some grit and lots of money / determination generation' VS the 'I'm gonna post a bad review about you on Trip Advisor / SB / the internet generation?'
The rec dive industry needs an innovation in catering to today's market, without which these discussions are irrelevant, and the agencies need to 'wake up their ideas' about what happens in a marketing pow-wow vis-a-vis the real world where DAN is recording annual dive accident statistics.
It was drilled quite well into me, far more time spent then on rescue and problem assessments, that if as a PADI instructor one did not follow the standards religiously then one would be in a legal black hole should anything happen. On the one hand, its reassuring to some folk that a certain set of 'standards' exist. On the other hand ... it leads to the fact that even if I were to teach more and beyond standards and something does happen ... I'd wear my A** for a hat. What say you all to this?
