Master.........Really?

[boulderjohn]

I'm presuming that the course fee is split into a fee for the certifying agency, a sales fee for the LDS and a fee for the instructor?

The certifying agency is paid for the course materials and the certification card only. The rest of the money goes to the shop, who then pays the instructor. You will be shocked to learn how little of it goes to the instructor in many cases. Many do not actually make minimum wage when teaching a class.

Self study is about 2 decades old now. It apparently worked pretty well for both you and your wife. Perhaps you wanted more than you got out of it, but you certainly got enough.

Online instruction in the academic areas started at different times with different agencies. Students who do the online study have to come in with their certificate of completion to meet with the instructor, who verifies that they know what they are doing and administers a final exam in person. When it started, the leadership of the shop with which I was working then was opposed to online learning and did not allow it for quite some time. Then they started allowing it a little at a time, and instructors reported stunning success. For me personally, I can't recall exactly, but I got through maybe a dozen students before one of them missed a single question on the final exam. By then that shop was so convinced that it did nothing but online learning from then on.

 

[packrat12]

DivingDubai you hit the nail right on the head with the length vs cost of the course. The one think to keep in mind with self study and multiple choice tests is that an instructor cannot determine if a knowledge transfer actually occurred or if something else happened. The idea of blended instruction is that the instructor can impart knowledge, the student can study and research at their own pace and that at the end, the instructor can lead Q&A style sessions to determine if a knowledge transfer has occurred (Learning). Shorten that time too far and the instructor cannot adequately do that.

Flight instruction has minimums - Hrs of ground instruction by a certified instructor, hrs of dual instruction by a certified instructor, hrs of solo time under an instructors direct supervision. All working towards a set of standards that must be met, including knowledge and skills. An independent examination (at least in spirit) of the students capabilities by either the FAA or a Designated Flight Examiner before a certificate is issued. This examination consists of a Written Test, an Oral test by the DE and a flight test by the DE.

giffenk - Similar thing this month of diving for me on 2 different dives. 1 OOA from an advanced student with an instructor... Gee I guess 300 PSI was not enough to get up. 1 More OOA where that diver found a young (16yr) girl and literally ripped the regulator out of her mouth to breath. She held her cool and was able to go to her second. If I was her father (he was there) I would have been arrested for killing him right there!

As for this thread's point:

As I still repeat, a Master Diver certification with the current minimums (50 dives... really?) does NOT make a master diver. It is barely a reflection of a diver past basic skills. Seeing who is advocating that a Master Diver certificate is prestigious says a lot. It is a cert to show that someone has paid into training and has not necessarily experienced extensive diving. They then appear to hold it up saying how skilled they are. Make the certificate more challenging and difficult to achieve, then we may actually have a real Master Diver on hand!

 

[packrat12]

The certifying agency is paid for the course materials and the certification card only. The rest of the money goes to the shop, who then pays the instructor. You will be shocked to learn how little of it goes to the instructor in many cases. Many do not actually make minimum wage when teaching a class.

Hey boulderjohn - Here is something we can really agree upon. Part of the problem in my opinion is that to make the cost of training (make any money), the shop must minimize all other costs. The instructor typically gets the shaft in the end. We as the diving community need to understand that low cost training does not benefit us in the end. I seriously doubt anyone is making much money on a student. The agency gets a "cut off of the top" and everyone else must divi the rest!

 

[Shotmaster]

The old saying goes, you get what you pay for. The cost of dive training has gone down relative to what I paid. It has also gotten shorter. The pressure to make initial training affordable is why it has been shortened. I don't see how dive shops make money doing training. It is necessary to create customers who will buy gear. I spend money with my LDS, I just had a Faber 95 hydroed, it had a yoke valve and I paid the dive shop retail for the new DIN valve, I could have gotten it online for 1/3 rd the price. But they can't stay in business just filling tanks. I also bought new fins. If you have a dive shop you like, give them your business or they won't be around.

 

[EFX]

Gee, it might be fun to have a Master Diver competition! Kinda like a Triathlon or obstacle course but where the diver has to accomplish a myriad of tasks including donning your gear, rescuing a distressed diver, shooting a moving target with a speargun (no scuba for this one), navigate using only a compass and depth gauge, raising a 100 pound object from the bottom, make an entry/exit through heavy surf, dive to 300 feet in icy water, make a decompression dive without getting the bends, locate a missing object that fell off of a boat, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff.

Don't make it a competition. Make it qualifications for the master diver rating. Oh, excuse me, the PADI master diver rating. This still won't satisfy some folks. Let's add frying an egg underwater. If you can do all of this you get your cert handed to you in a wet paper bag. And if you're really good, misunderstand the difference between an open water and a cavern dive. Then, you get your cert in a dry paper bag.

 

[JamesBon92007]

Outside of highly specialized dives nobody questions if I'm qualified to go on a dive or not so I'm happy with my Master Diver card. Much better than the one that said Scuba Diver on it.

Now ya got me thinking about how to fry an egg underwater....

 

[Shotmaster]

I solved the problem a long time ago. I have my own boat. Fortuneantly I got to do all the challenging diving I wanted to do, cave and spring diving, night dives, drift dives, wreck dives, before a lot of this nonsense got started. I can certainly see the need for technical certs for rebreather and mixed gas diving. The navy has three qualifications, diver, dive supervisor, and Master Diver. How we got to the point where you have to have 49 qualifications to do a dive is beyond me, unless it is driven this way to create revenue.

 

[packrat12]

A little of why many of us place little value in the PADI Master Diver certificate.

As a caveat, while I use PADI here, this really applies to almost all primary diver certification agencies at one level or another.

Make no mistake, PADI is in the business to make money. While it is privately held, there are investors and owners that wish to make a profit. They do not do exist for philanthropic reasons. I believe PADI has 3 main revenue streams, 1 – Certification of Students and associated materials, 2 – Certification and fees for Instructors and associated materials, 3 – Fees for dive shops and operations, including what used to be $1500 annual for the 5 star sticker. There may be other revenue streams but I would assume these are the primary.

PADI’s safety dilemma – PADI needs to keep an appearance as a responsible and proactive training agency attractive to prospective students. PADI needs to reduce lawsuits to a minimum to maximize profits. PADI also needs to ‘keep below the Government radar’ to reduce the likelihood of Government regulation within the SCUBA industry.

PADI’s revenue dilemma – An active student will feed all 3 streams of income. An active diver will feed the dive shop stream only and may not even care if PADI continues to exist. An inactive diver will not feed any streams to PADI. From this, PADI makes the most revenue when there is an active student in the pipeline. There is a shared goal that if dive operations thrive, PADI thrives and vice versa. Training, however, brings the most revenue to PADI.

PADI’s training dilemma – How to keep students in the training pipeline. It has another goal which is to keep students on the PADI track and not having them leave for another agency. There are various ways to do this including restricting what agencies a dive shop/instructor can train besides PADI, branding and training incentives.

The training path:

Open Water – This is a basic certification meant to get divers trained as well as get them into the PADI pipeline. In my opinion, this certificate has been reduced in capabilities over the years as a part of the pipeline. No matter what, this certificate is the end point for a lot of divers who stop diving altogether. For divers wishing to regularly dive, this certificate is only moderately effective as there are significant limitations imposed now on it, without regard to diving experience. PADI’s goal is to move a diver from Open Water to advance as fast as possible. They do this by requiring no additional diving between getting their Open Water and starting their Advanced training.

Advanced Open Water – This is the required certificate for the broadest range of recreational diving. No other primary certificate is required by almost any boat or shore operation. No minimum experience is required beyond Open Water certification and in my opinion it is really just a carry-on from Open Water certification. Many inactive divers stop after getting their AOW. I would be willing to bet that without life changes, the majority of them went directly from OW to AOW without significant diving between them and then stopped.

Nitrox – I put this one here because, in my opinion, it should just be combined with OW or AOW and not a specialty or certification. Since it is not, the AOW and Nitrox paring makes the most sense. With AOW/Nitrox, there basically are no additional certification requirements for recreational diving.

What revenue has PADI gotten to this point, 1 – 3 certification fees, 2 – Primary instructor business (fees from them also), 3 – LDS business of some level (fees from them also). The problem for PADI – How do I entice the active AOW/Nitrox diver to continue training?

Rescue – In my opinion, this is the best and most important course beyond OW. This is a legitimate course that vastly changes a diver’s perception, attitude and skill set. Since it is not required by almost any operator, it is also a personal improvement course. Skills taught include lifesaving techniques, self-reflection, situational awareness for physical and mental, etc.

Now comes the real problem for PADI. They have the revenue stream from 4 certifications (OW, AOW, Nitrox, Rescue). How do I entice the student to go further in recreational diving?? I can offer a litany of specialty courses but that stream will be sporadic at best.

I can ‘create’ a certificate that sounds important. I can sell it as ‘the diver who has reached the pinnacle of recreational diving’. I then can require more specialties and thereby increasing my revenue stream for a while. We can call this certificate “Master Diver”. It sounds important even though PADI knows that not a single operator will require it. It will require a minimum of 4–5 additional specialty training courses, which feeds revue from all 3 streams as I have 5-6 additional certifications including the Master Diver certification (remember, up to this point have only 3-4 so it may actually double the certification stream). It keeps instructors and LDS more busy. The problem is, how do I entice a student to see this as an achievable goal. If I set it too hard, few will try. So I go the other route, I place a minimum number of dives on it, e.g. 50. Now the average diver can achieve the ‘above average’ certificate of Master Diver! And as a side effect (or primary planned effect), PADI has the additional revenue stream from 4-5 specialties!

PADI’s requirements: A Rescue level diver with 5 specialties and a minimum of 50 dives, including training.

So where is the Master Diver??? I just do not see it from PADI's requirements!

If we did not know PADI’s requirements for Master Diver, how would you define it?

Me – Master Diver: An advanced diver (Rescue level for PADI good) competent, confident, experienced and skilled in many various aspects of diving in many differing conditions. The diver would be expected be a leader of dives and have done a significant number of dives as a leader. This diver’s skills would be proven through the variety of diving that they have performed in a number of expected conditions including Deep, Wreck, drift, current, ocean, lake, etc. This diver would be near the top of the experience level for non-professional recreational divers.

I am curious for those active on this thread – How would you define Master Diver? How does PADI’s minimum requirements ensure your definition? If PADI’s minimum requirements do not ensure your definition and you think PADI is sufficient, HOW? This is why I give little credence to PADI’s Master Diver certification program. The diver may be but the program is not.

 

[EFX]

I am curious for those active on this thread – How would you define Master Diver?

Sorry, I'm not coming out to play. I'll just say I share jamesBon92007 sentiment.

 

[stuartv]

How we got to the point where you have to have 49 qualifications to do a dive is beyond me, unless it is driven this way to create revenue.

I haven't been around that long, but so far, for recreational dive operators, I haven't seen any that were requiring any certifications beyond AOW and Nitrox. I've seen ones that require advanced plus "previous night diving experience and 25 or more logged dives" or similar. But, other than the AOW, that is not a requirement for any actual certifications.

I am curious for those active on this thread – How would you define Master Diver? How does PADI’s minimum requirements ensure your definition? If PADI’s minimum requirements do not ensure your definition and you think PADI is sufficient, HOW? This is why I give little credence to PADI’s Master Diver certification program. The diver may be but the program is not.

It was already discussed in this thread (IIRC) that certifications are an indication of the level of training a person has, not their level of skill or their level of experience.

Scuba diving is not a competition, so I am skeptical that introducing a formal process for recognizing a level of skill would be productive. It seems like that would only serve to make diving competitive. "I have Ultra Scuba Diver, so that means I'm a better diver than you." Whereas now, all you can legitimately say is "I have Master Scuba Diver, so I have more training than you."

In addition, like other sports that do classify people based on demonstrated skill, making a Recreational Diving Master Scuba Diver classification be skill-based would also carry the additional burden (IMO) of "expiring" every year or so. If I don't compete in a motorcycle roadrace in long enough, I lose my Expert license and have to go back to "Amateur/Novice". Skills, unused, fade.

Anyway....

As I said earlier, if Recreational Diving Master Scuba Diver remains a certification of training completed (versus skill demonstrated), then it seems to me that it would reflect being in the top X% of recreational divers (which includes both sport and technical divers) for amount of training completed. Whether that is the top 10%, 5%, 2% or whatever.

And, as I said before, if you make it something like 5 or 10%, I would bet a dollar that most, if not all, of the people who currently have a MSD cert would still qualify for it. From what I've read, the percentage of all people with an OW card or higher that have done as much formal training as is required for a PADI MSD is pretty darn small. I mean, how many divers, out of the millions(?) of people with an OW card, have actually even done Rescue? Or even have 50 logged dives? I bet pretty much everyone with an MSD is in the top 10% of all recreational divers, with regard to amount of formal training completed. And I suspect they are pretty much all in the top 1%, actually. But, that is all wild-ass guessing.

The only "problem" I see is that, out of all the people in the world with an OW (or better) C card, something like 0.01% (number pulled out of thin air for the sake of discussion) of them get their knickers in a twist because they don't have some title that differentiates them from the people who have met the bare minimum requirements for an MSD cert. Or, really, their titles of Advanced Trimix Diver or Full Cave Diver or whatever they do have don't satisfy their egos' need to sound better to Joe Public than a guy who says "I have a Master Scuba Diver certification." They are somehow personally insulted by it when another diver with vastly less experience and skill than them has a card that makes it sound (to people who really don't know anything about scuba diving) as if that person is a "better" diver than them.