When PADI doesn't recognize PADI

[WheelsUSN]

Maybe PADI and dive shops wouldn't make any money if they took more time going through the certification courses, but I sure think it would make for safer divers.

It wouldn't affect PADI at all, they make their money from selling materials and processing certifications. Their costs aren't affected at all by the length of the course. The dive shops and instructors are the ones who would be making less money unless they raised their rates. If you want more time in class so you can spend more time practicing skills then you should talk to your instructor about taking a private class and negotiate an hourly rate for the extra time that you want him to give you.

 

[TMHeimer]

It wouldn't affect PADI at all, they make their money from selling materials and processing certifications. Their costs aren't affected at all by the length of the course. The dive shops and instructors are the ones who would be making less money unless they raised their rates. If you want more time in class so you can spend more time practicing skills then you should talk to your instructor about taking a private class and negotiate an hourly rate for the extra time that you want him to give you.

Exactly. The old question of how much would the lengthy course of 1965 cost in today's dollars? Another possibility is not to take the usual "weekend" course--take the 3 weeks of 2 nights a week (plus OW checkout weekend), etc. one as I did (if it is available). No more actual pool time, but only 3-4 skills at a time then you get time off to digest what you did. Rather than right on to the next skill.

I would think though that if courses were longer and no additional instructors were hired (and no space/pool space/pool time available to run courses concurrently) that there would have to be fewer courses. Meaning PADI also would lose money on materials/cert. processing--no?

 

[scagrotto]

I was gobsmacked when he told me he would not accept my PADI OW cert

I expect it's just a matter of semantics or perspective, but if he wouldn't "accept" the cert he wouldn't be offering the AOW class under any condition. He'd be insisting on a full OW course instead of a refresher. It's perfectly reasonable for him choose who he accepts as a student or insist that their skills exceed the minimum requirements. The only issue is how he goes about that.

I would be happy to do a checkout dive with him in any of the three quarries in our area. But I ain't paying over $200 for a pool session.

You know it costs both of you money to travel to the quarry and back, right? Perhaps an entrance fee? I thought there was a mention of them being some distance away. Its also possible that he doesn't consider them suitable due to viz and/or the large expanse you might somehow escape into while he's got a duty to look after you.

What your instructor is *required* by standards to offer in the AOW training includes an in-water assessment.

In this case he wishes to use the scuba-review as an instrument, which makes a LOT of sense to me because it's a structured method that covers all the bases.

It seems to me that if the requirement is for an assessment as part of the AOW class then it should be part of the class, and I'd expect the whole class to follow a structured method from start to finish. The instructor's plan for how to provide any remedial training that's necessary or deal with a student who isn't ready to continue is a separate issue. Simply insisting on a refresher "course" before assessing the skills strikes me as a failure to offer a fair option. It's definitely a good way to not get that student as a customer as we see here. Perhaps that's one thing to the instructor's credit - maybe he's just hoping for a few bucks extra, but he probably realizes there's a good chance it will cost him the student.

Unless the OP is looking for a private class I think it's especially unreasonable to expect the OP to pay for pool time to be assessed (and given paid training whether he needs it or not, from the sound of it) separately from the class, where the cost of pool time will be distributed over the entire class. Unless the other students are all his own the logical conclusion is that he's making the same offer to everyone who might be in that class.

It wouldn't affect PADI at all, they make their money from selling materials and processing certifications.

That means their income is directly related to the number of people who take a PADI course, and that's partly a function of the cost of taking the course. If getting an OW cert cost $50 and took 8 hours many people who would otherwise take a resort course on vacation might get certified at home and just dive as an OW diver on vacation. OTOH, if it cost $1000 and took 60 hours a lot of divers would probably just be snorkelers, and maybe do an occasional resort course dive. We know that a lot of people get certified and then quickly become non-divers again. The profit motive incentivizes PADI (and other agencies) to follow minimum standards to keep courses cheap and plentiful.

 

[boulderjohn]

It seems to me that if the requirement is for an assessment as part of the AOW class then it should be part of the class, and I'd expect the whole class to follow a structured method from start to finish. The instructor's plan for how to provide any remedial training that's necessary or deal with a student who isn't ready to continue is a separate issue. Simply insisting on a refresher "course" before assessing the skills strikes me as a failure to offer a fair option.

That's how I see it.

AOW requires five dives, two required and three at the student's choice. The navigation dive usually takes the whole dive to complete the required skills--in fact, I recently had two students, and it took me two dives to complete all the skills at the depth we were working. With the other dives, however, a much lesser portion of the dive is spent on the required skills. If a student selects an option like altitude diver, in fact, no part of the dive is spent on skills. When I have a new AOW student, I always choose one of the dives with the least risk and the least amount of required skills for the first dive. That gives me plenty of time to assess the student's needs and even work on them--especially buoyancy and trim--throughout the dive. The rest of the dives go the same way. I can spend part of every dive (except navigation) working on whatever I want to work on with the student.

I can even add in extra stuff. For example, the pair of AOW students mentioned above completed their deep dive during a drift dive in south Florida. We had gone over pretty much all the knowledge reviews for all the dives in the book, not just the five we were doing, before that. The boat dropped us off on the deep side of the reef so that we could get our needed depth and then headed to the shallow side to drop off the rest of the divers. We went to depth and did the few required skills, and then I had them navigate to the shallow side to complete the dive, with the two taking turns holding the dive flag line and leading our direction by compass. They only got credit for the deep dive and still had to do four more, but on that dive they did everything required for the boat dive and drift dive, too. Throughout the dive we identified fish enough to get credit for that one, too. They had to use their compasses to get to the shallow side, so there was navigation practice. The dive plan also fit into multi-level/computer. Of course, as they went over the reef, buoyancy control was important.

If I have a student who looks pretty bad on that first dive, I assure you that student will be a different diver after five such dives.

 

[Redshift]

It wouldn't affect PADI at all, they make their money from selling materials and processing certifications. Their costs aren't affected at all by the length of the course.

And why do you think they started selling more courses than other agencies? Because they lowered standards, allowed courses to be done in 3 days... Obviously this attracted people to take their courses.