How Long Does It Take To Get Certified?

If you shop around on Maui, and Scuba Gods certainly encourages you to do so, you’ll find that, on average, most PADI scuba certification courses advertised are based around a 3 day time frame for completion, and incredibly, on occasion, 2 days. Can you really get certified in as little as 2 or 3 days? The answer, surprisingly, is yes, although it would be extremely difficult or next to impossible under most circumstances for the average person to do so. The reason being, there simply isn’t enough time. Here’s the deal: In an effort to give instructors greater flexibility in how they conduct the scuba certification course, PADI, in the last few years, has modified it’s certification course standards, which, in theory, means the course can be completed in a shorter time frame than in the past. Notice the words, “In theory”. In reality, it’s the opinion of Scuba Gods that it’s almost impossible to properly certify someone in less than 4 days, and, to support that claim, we could produce honest references from 100’s of our former Maui scuba certification students who have successfully completed the course. While there is no set amount of hours that’s required to certify someone, there is work involved to getting certified that does take some time. To prove a point, let’s look at the work load that’s required in a typical PADI Open Water Diver certification course:

• Perform an easy swim test consisting of treading water and swimming laps

• Read 5 chapters of the PADI certification course manual, and complete a “Knowledge Review” at the end of each chapter

• Complete 4 individual, 10 question, multiple choice quizzes

• Complete a 50 question, multiple choice final exam

• Participate in 5 confined water skill sessions

• Participate in 4 open ocean dives

As you may have deduced by now, to pull off this amount of work in 2 days would be completely impossible. You may have an outside chance of doing it in 3 days if a student arrives on Maui who has already purchased and read the PADI certification course manual, completed the “Knowledge Reviews” at the end of each chapter, and, as an added bonus, has been introduced to scuba diving via an introductory lesson sometime in the past. On day one of the certification course, they would already be way ahead of the game, allowing things to precede at a much accelerated rate than normal, and the course could potentially conclude in 3 days. It’s an ideal scenario that every instructor dreams of, but unfortunately, in real life, rarely ever occurs. In fact, in over 14 years of conducting PADI scuba certification courses, Scuba Gods has seen this occur on 2, perhaps 3 occasions at best. The truth is, 99% of all students arrive without the course manual, having never tried scuba before. The instructor must start the certification course from scratch, giving students the course materials right out of the gate. Can you imagine how time consuming the teaching process becomes, both in and out of the water, with 2, 4, 6 or more students in the class?

Maui dive companies like to market the 3 day PADI Open Water Diver certification course for 2 reasons. First, they know that tourists, who stay an average of 7 to 10 days on Maui, don’t want to spend their entire vacation getting certified. Second, the more students they can turn over in the least amount of time (known as “Turning and Burning” in the scuba business) the more $$$’s they can generate in the process. While none of this is illegal, unfortunately, in an effort to save time, the certification course must be conducted at a whirlwind pace in order to finish in 3 days. As a result, PADI course standards may get sacrificed at your expense in order to make that happen. Here are just some of the things Scuba Gods has observed over the years:

• Instructors not covering required academic material and telling students to read the book themselves

• Instructors not performing swim tests

• Instructors not teaching required scuba certification skills like BCD oral inflation, giant stride entry’s, and compass use

• Instructors combining 5 required confined water skill sessions into 1 or 2 mega-sessions, in order to save time

• Instructors combining 4 required open ocean dives into 1 or 2 mega-dives, in order to save time

Scuba Gods isn’t here to run down other Maui scuba diving companies, but anyone in this business who’s honest and knows anything at all will tell you these things can and do occur, and a lot more frequently than you may realize. They’re also a total violation of PADI scuba certification course standards, and while PADI does have a quality assurance program in place, it requires it’s own instructor members to file a report (i.e.rat / whistle blow on each other) if they witness a violation. In the real world, how many times do you think that actually happens?

At this point you may be asking yourself, “Why should I care about any of this stuff, as long as I get certified?” That’s a legitimate question that deserves a legitimate answer. Read on, and you’ll discover why scuba diving needs to be taken seriously....Very seriously.

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