A Scuba Diving Instructor Salary Explained - How much do Dive Instructors earn?

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Not really. The bar is really low. You have to be a real screwball to fail. I'd expect the correlation to taking more that 4 years to finish high school and failing the IE is pretty high (that's a joke people).
i meant money wise - not brains or skill
 
There's an old joke, it goes something like this:

What's the difference between a scuba instructor and a large pizza?

A large pizza can feed a family of four.

So, I'm following this thread with a lot of interest.

IMHO, one of the biggest problems with trying to earn a living in this activity is there is always someone willing to work in scuba "for the love of the sport" and someone working for peanuts devalues instruction. This leads to the "race to the bottom" mentality, which tries to go for quantity over quality and this is why we still see OW scuba classes being sold for <$500 today. When running cheap scuba programs, something has to give somewhere, and it's usually in the areas of student contact hours or ratios. The course is either the bare minimum in time (3 days), or there are 6-8 students per instructor, or even both.

The other thing that can happen when you see cheap courses is quality of instruction can go down. The more experienced an instructor gets in the activity, they either move on to teach more lucrative courses OR they drop out altogether because unlike that pizza, they can't feed their family while working in the lower rungs of the activity. And, sadly, in some cases when you opt for a cheap course you either wind up with very burned out instructors going through the motions, or someone that while enthusiastic, is very green and new to scuba instruction. To be clear, that isn't ALWAYS the case, there are some very good, passionate, experienced instructors that are able to do this for cheap, but they are the rarity.

I truly believe one of the best things the industry could do to reform itself is focus less on OW certification courses and instead push for more DSD's, but with smaller ratios and a quality experience as their "first hit" on the scuba crack pipe. If the bug bites them and they get the urge to continue in the activity, they should pay for and receive a quality course. Under this model, it would be realistic for instructors to earn living (and even decent) wages. A person earning a decent wage will hopefully be more inclined to truly be a professional, treat their customers fairly, produce quality products (courses), and stay in the industry long term.

To give a comparison of how this model could work, let's look at skydiving. I pulled up two local skydiving web-sites and this is what I found:

A tandem jump, which is usually a 2-4 hour "experience" and includes a video of your flight, averages $200. Think of this as your DSD.

An accelerated free fall program, which looks to be about 4-5 days of instruction (and 7 jumps), is $1350 if you buy it as a package, and $1500 if you go piecemeal. Think of this as your basic OW scuba course.

If scuba instruction were priced where a 1/2 day DSD experience were in the ~$250 range and a 5 day OW course were ~$1750, I think it would be quite possible for an individual to earn a living and maybe even make a decent wage if they were fairly organized about it. The problem is selling these experiences/courses when there's a guy down the road offering a 3 day scuba certification for $500.

On my side, I'm pretty much close to the top of the dung heap when it comes to cave and tech instruction (I'm a cave/cave CCR instructor examiner), and while I believe I charge more than "market" prices (I have a 2 student minimum which means a solo student is paying significantly more), I make more per day at my day job, especially once you add in healthcare, leave and retirement benefits. Things that influence how much I make teaching include fixed costs (agency dues, insurance), variable but constant costs (gear repair/replacement, vehicle wear & tear), market demand (how many students/classes I can book), and how many days a month I can physically work in a month. However, I'm pretty sure I could earn a decent living wage if I were to cast off my day job, but it took me years of blood, sweat and tears to get here.
 
One problem I never see mentioned is that if you pay instructors what they are worth, there is a chance you can push the cost of the course beyond what people are willing to pay. No one gets paid if there are no customers.

When I got OW certified, I was living on a teacher's salary and had the family of four Kensuf mentioned. My wife and I were very cost conscious on our purchasing decisions. Getting certified was one cost to consider, and the cost of the diving that would follow was another. We were planning a vacation to Cozumel, and I thought it would be good to go there as a certified diver because I despise sitting on a beach. We talked it over, looked at the costs, and decided we could afford it. It was a close call.
 
One problem I never see mentioned is that if you pay instructors what they are worth, there is a chance you can push the cost of the course beyond what people are willing to pay. No one gets paid if there are no customers.

When I got OW certified, I was living on a teacher's salary and had the family of four Kensuf mentioned. My wife and I were very cost conscious on our purchasing decisions. Getting certified was one cost to consider, and the cost of the diving that would follow was another. We were planning a vacation to Cozumel, and I thought it would be good to go there as a certified diver because I despise sitting on a beach. We talked it over, looked at the costs, and decided we could afford it. It was a close call.
That was my whole point, low demand for dive certs when you look at the general public, and pretty high supply of instructors.
If you look at where the biggest demand is for scuba instruction I would say it is at resorts in warm water destinations. How much time and money are those people willing to spend on vacation and still have time and money to do other things? This is all taken into account when they price these courses. I’m sure they are running on razor thin margins already. Quality of instruction? How are people supposed to know anything about that when pricing these courses? They only find out later that they received less than adequate instruction after the fact.
There certainly isn’t any stampede to the dive shop around here to get OW certified. It costs more to get a cert here but the volume is very low. When you add up all the costs involved in getting OW here you have the whole class which is about $600 total. Then you have a weekend in Monterey which is two nights stay, food, parking, etc which can add up to $400-$600+ depending on how lavish. So total it’s going to be at least $1000 bill.
Plus it’s cold water, low vis, surgy, sometimes a moderate beach break, etc.
Certainly not for everyone.
That keeps demand pretty low.
 
Part of the issue is that it's a cool job that people are willing to do cheaply or for free. The same reason male porn actors get paid a tiny fraction of what female porn actors get paid. Like scuba, there is also economic pressure from amateur competitors. Anyone with a webcam and a paypal account can start a porn business. Even if they are completely unqualified to be in the business.
 
There's an old joke, it goes something like this:

What's the difference between a scuba instructor and a large pizza?

A large pizza can feed a family of four.

So, I'm following this thread with a lot of interest.

IMHO, one of the biggest problems with trying to earn a living in this activity is there is always someone willing to work in scuba "for the love of the sport" and someone working for peanuts devalues instruction. This leads to the "race to the bottom" mentality, which tries to go for quantity over quality and this is why we still see OW scuba classes being sold for <$500 today. When running cheap scuba programs, something has to give somewhere, and it's usually in the areas of student contact hours or ratios. The course is either the bare minimum in time (3 days), or there are 6-8 students per instructor, or even both.

The other thing that can happen when you see cheap courses is quality of instruction can go down. The more experienced an instructor gets in the activity, they either move on to teach more lucrative courses OR they drop out altogether because unlike that pizza, they can't feed their family while working in the lower rungs of the activity. And, sadly, in some cases when you opt for a cheap course you either wind up with very burned out instructors going through the motions, or someone that while enthusiastic, is very green and new to scuba instruction. To be clear, that isn't ALWAYS the case, there are some very good, passionate, experienced instructors that are able to do this for cheap, but they are the rarity.

I truly believe one of the best things the industry could do to reform itself is focus less on OW certification courses and instead push for more DSD's, but with smaller ratios and a quality experience as their "first hit" on the scuba crack pipe. If the bug bites them and they get the urge to continue in the activity, they should pay for and receive a quality course. Under this model, it would be realistic for instructors to earn living (and even decent) wages. A person earning a decent wage will hopefully be more inclined to truly be a professional, treat their customers fairly, produce quality products (courses), and stay in the industry long term.

To give a comparison of how this model could work, let's look at skydiving. I pulled up two local skydiving web-sites and this is what I found:

A tandem jump, which is usually a 2-4 hour "experience" and includes a video of your flight, averages $200. Think of this as your DSD.

An accelerated free fall program, which looks to be about 4-5 days of instruction (and 7 jumps), is $1350 if you buy it as a package, and $1500 if you go piecemeal. Think of this as your basic OW scuba course.

If scuba instruction were priced where a 1/2 day DSD experience were in the ~$250 range and a 5 day OW course were ~$1750, I think it would be quite possible for an individual to earn a living and maybe even make a decent wage if they were fairly organized about it. The problem is selling these experiences/courses when there's a guy down the road offering a 3 day scuba certification for $500.

On my side, I'm pretty much close to the top of the dung heap when it comes to cave and tech instruction (I'm a cave/cave CCR instructor examiner), and while I believe I charge more than "market" prices (I have a 2 student minimum which means a solo student is paying significantly more), I make more per day at my day job, especially once you add in healthcare, leave and retirement benefits. Things that influence how much I make teaching include fixed costs (agency dues, insurance), variable but constant costs (gear repair/replacement, vehicle wear & tear), market demand (how many students/classes I can book), and how many days a month I can physically work in a month. However, I'm pretty sure I could earn a decent living wage if I were to cast off my day job, but it took me years of blood, sweat and tears to get here.
I actually really agree with the DSD comments and the “crack pipe” analogy.
A lot of people just want to get the experience without needing to go through the whole program.
Beefing up the DSD programs and taking those a few notches up would definitely get more people comfortable in the water and more willing to spend later on a full OW course if they had more of a clue of what they were getting into.
 
Part of the issue is that it's a cool job that people are willing to do cheaply or for free. The same reason male porn actors get paid a tiny fraction of what female porn actors get paid. Like scuba, there is also economic pressure from amateur competitors. Anyone with a webcam and a paypal account can start a porn business. Even if they are completely unqualified to be in the business.
This post raises interesting questions about your knowledge of some things.
 
A fun fact about the porn industry. Ed Wood, the same guy that created such classic B movies as "Plan 9 from Outer Space," spent the last years of his life in the porn industry directing a series of short pornos under the "Swedish Erotica" banner.

There are things I'd personally love to do some day. Going to outer space is probably at the top of that list. A Virgin Galactic ticket is $450,000 (Virgin Galactic space flight tickets to start at $450,000), I'll probably never be able to go to space with those ticket prices.

John, I vaguely recall you mentioning somewhere that the course you took to become a certified diver was lacking and in some regards, probably violated most of the agency standards. It only sticks in my mind because I thought I remembered you saying it was a NAUI program. I didn't do an extensive search to verify, but I did find this post of yours: PADI vs NAUI

Would you say you got your moneys worth from that particular class?

Now to be clear, I'm not saying that more expensive classes will be free of standards violations, but I do believe that if instructors pushed more people to DSD's instead of cheap OW courses and were able to charge enough for an OW course to provide 40+ contact hours and lower student:instructor ratios, we'd be a healthier industry.
 
@kensuf,

While I will admit that I am pulling this from a dark orifice, I do believe that one reason why some people do not continue diving is that they subconsciously know they are not skilled enough to dive autonomously. At least in areas with dark, cold water like the Puget Sound. My basis is that my retention rates have flipped from the times that I taught on the knees and followed agency guidelines for dive planning versus teaching neutrally buoyant/trim and augmenting the dive planning information.

I do believe that 5 hours of pool time and 4 OW dives is sufficient to create competent, confident open water divers if they are taught properly.
 

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