Is there an instructor crisis?

[berndo]

My good friend (and SB member here) who is an instructor in Canada pulled the plug last year on teaching. Got too expensive, insurance being the major reason. Hearing it everywhere in the US and Canada...

I'm starting to think this insurance issue is somehow related to the legal system in the US... you know, the one that has been under the control of law making boomers . Lol, just kidding... I know it's these lazy kids.

No wonder insurances need to raise rates when they have fight law suits like these:

Geico off the hook in $5 million payout to woman who got STD in car

Case stems from a woman who said she contracted a sexually transmitted disease in the back of a car insured by the company.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[boulderjohn]

$800 for insurance may sound like a lot, but it is only for basic liability. If you, for example, deal with other aspects of the job, like gas blending, you need to purchase riders. I know instructors paying about $2,000 total for one year of insurance.

One thought I have is the lawsuit strategy that started a little over a decade ago with the drifting Dan Carlock case. In that case, a dive club chartered a boat for a 3-tank dive trip, and two members of the club, who were certified DMs, took the roll after each dive. They missed DAN, and he drifted on the surface for hours before being picked up. In the lawsuit, the plaintiff argued that the two DMs, who were acting solely as part of their club, were agents of PADI, and they successfully included PADI in the lawsuit, even though no one n PADI would have known the dive trip was going on, let alone supervised the actions of the DMs.

Well, PADI and the other agencies have now changed their liability waivers to include the understanding that DMs and instructors do not work for them, do not act under their direction, and are therefore not agents, but that does not seem to make a difference. If a DM or instructor screws up these days and a lawsuit follows, the agency that certified them is automatically included in the lawsuit. This, of course, has a tremendous impact on all costs associated with scuba.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Outside of maybe FL, do you know of ANY open water instructors in the US who don’t have another source of income? I don’t even know of any tech instructors outside of FL cave country who have that as their sole income.

I can't imagine an OW instructor in the US who relies on that as their sole income. But my guess is that as an area becomes more expensive to live in, the number of instructors may decrease no matter what percentage of income they get from instructing. You will only be left with the few who don't need the money.

 

[Marie13]

I can't imagine an OW instructor in the US who relies on that as their sole income. But my guess is that as an area becomes more expensive to live in, the number of instructors may decrease no matter what percentage of income they get from instructing. You will only be left with the few who don't need the money.

If an instructor doesn’t rely on the minute amount of $$ from classes, they may very well keep going just from the love of it. You don’t get full time open water instructors in the Midwest.

 

[rjack321]

Well, PADI and the other agencies have now changed their liability waivers to include the understanding that DMs and instructors do not work for them, do not act under their direction, and are therefore not agents, but that does not seem to make a difference. If a DM or instructor screws up these days and a lawsuit follows, the agency that certified them is automatically included in the lawsuit. This, of course, has a tremendous impact on all costs associated with scuba.

You can't take the position that you (any agency) sets the STANDARDS for a class or DSD, then wash your hands of any responsibility for the instructor/DMs after the fact. That's not how any of this works.

Train better instructors, don't write standards that create vast amounts of "discretion" for dive shops to pressure their instructors, get sued less. It's a circle of magical legal consequences the dive industry can't seem to jump off of.

 

[Lorenzoid]

If an instructor doesn’t rely on the minute amount of $$ from classes, they may very well keep going just from the love of it.

I agree. Isn't that what I said? "You will only be left with the few who don't need the money."

 

[Marie13]

I agree. Isn't that what I said? "You will only be left with the few who don't need the money."

The few won’t don’t need the money aren’t “the few” in the Midwest. OW instructors here have other sources of income, so they’re the majority, not the few.

 

[Jcp2]

Gap year? Is that supposed to be when the parents would otherwise say "You want a year off to go play? After I supported you for 20+ years with ZERO responsibility, you want to drag that out another year? Take your degree, go get a job (be glad I didn't let you major in 'Northern Mongolian Renaissance-era Gender Studies'), find a place to live, and be an adult. Good luck in life. Report back marriage, child births, other significant milestones"?

I think I got a Gap Week. which I used to find an apartment, move from college town to work city, get unpacked, get shoes shined and shirts ironed, then start work.

Many cultures have a gap year equivalent. In Australia, that’s a walkabout. The Amish have rumspringa. In North America, there’s a vision quest. Just because modern industrialized societies have turned people into persons valued largely on the basis of productive output doesn’t mean that time to gather oneself is useless.

 

[Lorenzoid]

The few won’t don’t need the money aren’t “the few” in the Midwest. OW instructors here have other sources of income, so they’re the majority, not the few.

Wow. I must be having a really inarticulate day. I mean those who do not need the money are "the few" out of all instructors everywhere. Most instructors worldwide DO need the money. The post I first replied to was contrasting the US with tropical locations, and my thought was that it's not just true in the US in general but perhaps even more so where the cost of living is highest in the US.

The Midwest and other places where diving is highly seasonal may have their own considerations.

 

[BoltSnap]

Train better instructors, don't write standards that create vast amounts of "discretion" for dive shops to pressure their instructors, get sued less. It's a circle of magical legal consequences the dive industry can't seem to jump off of.

What is the problem you are trying to solve here? Is there an increase in deaths and injuries in diving and PADI is being sued more because of the low quality of PADI's instructors?