A Time Magazine report a couple decades ago said that the Ivy League schools were so well-endowed that they could let all students attend for free, and their endowment would still grow.
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Different schools have different student target populations, and they enroll accordingly. That very much includes state schools. Some of the colleges in the NY state system are extremely hard to get into; others less so.
It's a great question, and I wish I had a great answer.Boulder John, got a question...if you had a powerful, influential policy-maker position with DEMA, PADI or whichever organization you think might best address this (within the scuba industry, not President of the U.S. or head of the EPA), what measures would you take? A shift in what goals for diving we try in instill (e.g.: not just pretty coral flower gardens with pretty tropical fish)? A bigger push toward eventual wreck, cave and other 'non-reef' content?
I have seen marketing surveys that show that if you want to grow the general diving population, the way to do it is NOT through advertising high adventure and diving. People considering that in general are not interested in that. They are interested in exploring an undersea realm safely.
Yes, I read online that many students one way or another get a free ride at Harvard, or very low tuition.A Time Magazine report a couple decades ago said that the Ivy League schools were so well-endowed that they could let all students attend for free, and their endowment would still grow.
This is really funny. What you are suggesting is exactly what scuba was well into the second decade of the sport. The first divers from Cousteau through the early SoCal years were all skin divers first and mostly hunters and shellfish gatherers. The largest change in training from the early days of the sport had nothing to do with scuba skills, instead it was the almost complete abandonment of the swimming/snorkeling/freediving training that originally made up a large part of scuba training.Here's a thought for an alternative (not replacement). Maybe a course in diving - that includes free diving and scuba, not treating them as separate worlds but part of a set of alternative 'tool boxes' people can use to pursue their diving goals. Free diving is cheaper as it's less gear intensive (disclaimer: I'm not trained in free diving), yes? The message would be 'You can dive without paying a lot of money, or being encumbered like an astronaut gearing up to walk on moon.' Maybe show free diving as a natural extension of a love of snorkeling.
But...when you want to go down and down awhile, it's really not that bad an ordeal to get there, and here's how it's done in case you'd like to.
When I look at a technical diver pictured with a bunch of gas bottles, I am impressed with technical training achievement I imagine it must take to handle all that on a dive...while wondering if any dive could possibly be worth that much hassle. Maybe snorkelers and free-divers look at some recreational divers that way?
Given the number of hunters and fisherman, and the role they often play in nature conservation (e.g.: Ducks Unlimited), perhaps spear fishing should be discussed earlier and publicized more. Not training in the basic OW course, but people shown a clear path to get there.
There is nothing new here. I was certified nearly a quarter century ago. My class took 2.5 days, and many standards were skipped to make that possible, as I realized much later. I am quite sure the dive operator was doing what it had been doing for many years. The peak of scuba participation world wide was well after that, and many people are arguing that we are still at a world-wide peak.The thinking now seems to be make it as quick and cheap as possible, to lower the barrier to entry. Then let people modular chunks (e.g.: Nitrox, AOW, Deep Diver) as needed to round out their dive training needs, like choosing a major in pursuing a college degree.
I think there is a major difference between technical divers and the rest of the diving community in this regard. Most divers like it when the dive operator does as much as possible to remove the work of diving. For technical divers, that work is actually part of the fun. I wrote about it here.When I look at a technical diver pictured with a bunch of gas bottles, I am impressed with technical training achievement I imagine it must take to handle all that on a dive...while wondering if any dive could possibly be worth that much hassle.