Dispelling scubaboard myths (Part 1: It is the instructor not the agency)
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I agree, colleges seam to have a different criteria for what makes a qualified teacher or professor ect.
A comment made earlier about nauii being in the colleges surprised me because at one time padi was the only one allowed because of their curriculum lesson structure met the required instructor course materials format. Glad to see others have changed.
There is also an aspect in instructors motives to instruct. I have talked to some instructors in college areas and when asked whos course do yo teach they say PADI of course and for 2 reasons.
1. padi can be taught freelance. (dont have to be attached to an LDS to teach)
2. they qualify (being padi) to teach college classes for college credits.
At that time all scuba classes were 30$ per class (materials included) and the state paid the rest. So Including basic gear student cost was well under 300$ from OW to DM. It was a gold mine for padi instructors. As funny as it sounds when you got your DM you still did not have your own BCD. There was no end of students wanting to try something new on someone elses dime adn get credits for it. And instructors made money hand over fist.
I guess you call that a cattle drive and you got paid by the head at delivery. mUCH LIKE CANOEING FOR COLLEGE CREDITS.
Of course ther are the instructors that put out a quality diver and many are here on SB.
I have to agree with Tbone. OW is not a real class,,, it is a most basic survival class. can you go in with your air on, and get back to the surface alive? if so you pass.. The real learning happens after you get your OW card and it mostly comes from observing other divers and asking questions. 3 years ago my wife got her OW in a 2 day class,,,,, her replace mask and CESA was done from 3-5 feet. It was oK with me because i could teach her right at working depths over several months. The problem comes when you have no one to dive with routinely like a spouse or parent and you overload your wet suit doing something you did not know was stupid. You know like taking that cattle boat to a dive spot an doing a 100' dive never before experiencing how fast your gas is used.
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If students know they have been shortchanged, they should report it.
As mentioned earlier, my OW course did not meet standards, but I did not know it at the time. It was only when I became a DM and had to demonstrate all the skills in the OW course that I realized how many I had never done. I went back to my original log book and saw that the skills were listed in the course, and my instructor had signed off that I had done them. I had never looked at that before to see that. The current PADI logbook has far greater details about what needs to be done, and they are in more prominent places. That is only for the OW dives, though--the student is still in the dark about what is actually required in the pool.
PADI does survey most students after the class, though, and their questions are very specific about what happened in the class. It is hard for me to understand how instructors get away with cutting back on standards consistently with that happening.
We had a thread a couple years ago that shows one way. The person writing about it refused to identify the shop because it could get back to them and result in his being kicked out. What he said was that the shop did AOW certifications without doing the deep dive. They told students they did not do it because they did not have a deep enough site locally. The truth is they did, but it would be a little (not much) inconvenient to get to it. They told the students that because they did not have access to a deep enough site, PADI had granted them a waiver. (I confirmed with PADI that no dive operation in the world has a waiver for the deep dive.) They told the students what the deep dive question would look like on their survey, and how they were supposed to answer it to avoid questions. So that is how one operation gets away with violating standards, but I don't know how the others get away with it consistently. I know that neither of the shops for which I worked intentionally violated any standards, and I know one instructor who was fired because he violated one standard unrepentantly.
And those short changed students, having started a class from zero would know they might have been short changed at that time by having something to compare to (as opposed to never or maybe much later in their diving activity when they have a basis of knowing better) and they would be informed by the short changing instructor as to where to report it to and how so and how to back up those horrific claims... and that magical student oriented place would then actually do something to improve things?
Sorry John, I gain a great deal of knowledge from almost all your posts... that sentence just happened to strike a chord. Pardon the tone. Got it off my chest. Generally the difficulty or the problems with students rating the teacher has been discussed at length already... This is one step further yet ... and one step tougher to be in a good position for at least for a brand new OW student...
By "shortchanged," I clearly referred to skipped standards. I clearly pointed out that one problem is that they usually don't know if they have been shortchanged, as was the case with me. I could have known that if I had just looked at my log book more carefully and seen that I was signed off for skills I had not done. I said that in the current logbook, the OW skills are impossible to miss--the student is in fact supposed to check them off when they are done. Not all of the pool skills are listed, but many of them are. Again, any student looking at the logbook and seeing that the 10 minute surface float was checked off when they did not in fact do it would realize it.
How would they know to whom they should report it? I didn't mention this, because I thought the detective work required would not be extensive. If it is a PADI class, after careful consideration, they might report it to PADi, which is easily done by accessing the web site. When I was still a pretty much beginning diver, I went to dive in Fiji. While there, I saw a student get certified by PADI in a way that was obviously a standards violation even to someone like me who did not really know what the standards were. I looked up the PADI address and sent them a letter describing what I had seen. I got a response soon after saying that they had investigated the case and would be dealing with that instructor. They did not tell me what they did, but I would expect that the instructor was expelled--they have expelled others for less. I did not realize it then, but I could have gone to the web site after the next quarter and seen what was done--their major disciplinary actions are posted publically.
I don't think I was a genius for figuring out that a complaint about PADI should go to PADI, and it did take stellar detective work to learn their address. I think those skills are within the capabilities of many people.
chrisch
Contributor
This is essentially about quality control. In this aspect of scuba training there can be (and are) very different levels of activity between the agencies. In theory all instructors should conform to the required standards and so they all should meet a benchmark - the instructor him/herself is not the primary variable (in our debate). In practice the QC is variable as are the instructors and so they become the issue - not the agency.
I think this is why people have points of view that can be so different. Our experiences form our opinions and our experiences are very different.
I have always been told PADI does QC well. I have no experience of it - I have never been surveyed. I do not know anyone personally that has. Perhaps things have changed over the years? My last PADI course was well over a decade ago. But - to be fair - I have never been surveyed by any other agency either. I do not know anyone personally that has.
So it is quite possible that standards are highly variable, particularly with a global forum such as this.
So, when you say survey "most" students post class - what does that mean and what are other people's experiences of it? Perhaps this will help us dispel the "myth" or make it the truth.
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