College of Oceaneering
Year Founded: 1967
Revenues in 1996: $3 million
Revenues in 1998 (projected): $3.9 million
Core Business: Commercial dive training
Enrollment 1996: 225
Enrollment in 1998: 300
Employees: 43
Goal: To provide the best training possible, and to increase enrollment
Driving Force: Strong demand for commercial divers
When Alek Haidos took a job as director of student services for the College of Oceaneering, he found himself with a tremendous buying opportunity.
The school, which teaches students how to do heavy construction underwater, “was being managed terribly, and was headed for bankruptcy,” Haidos recalls.
A longtime teacher and principal for Los Angeles Unified School District adult schools, Haidos called up his old friend John Schwitters, who in 1995 had just returned to the United States from a stint as a senior executive with a German corporation.
“We looked at the books, did due diligence, gave our houses as collateral for the bank, and the rest is history,” said Schwitters, who is now president of the college and handles finances. Haidos manages the operations.
Headquartered in a homey wood-paneled 1948 low-rise on Wilmington’s industrial waterfront, the College of Oceaneering trains students to weld and inspect underwater infrastructure. Of five such schools in the United States, the College of Oceaneering is one of the two largest.
The college has 300 students at any given time, with a new class entering every 10 weeks. Tuition is $15,950 for the one-year program.
“Spectech,” the most popular program, covers the inspection of underwater and above-water structures using ultrasonic, magnetic and other instruments. “Medtech” involves emergency diving medicine, and the “Weldtech” program teaches underwater burning and welding.
Demand for graduates has never been stronger, said Schwitters, noting that the school places in excess of 93 percent of its graduates most of them snapped up by subcontractors to major oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico.
“There’s always maintenance and repairs that need to be done,” said Dan Holmes, shop manager at Oceaneering International Inc.’s Ventura office. “You have to maintain what’s out there.”
Fully half of the company’s new hires come from the College of Oceaneering, Holmes said.
Pat Laughlin, who directs hiring for Cal Dive International Inc., a Louisiana-based subcontractor, said that between half and two-thirds of his company’s hires come from the Wilmington college. Annual starting salaries are in the $30,000 range, and eventually rise into the $80,000 range.
Cal Dive is still busy cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico from the destruction wrought in 1993 by Hurricane Andrew. “We’re dismantling platforms, plugging old wellheads, and taking platforms out of the water,” he said.
Revenues have increased by nearly $1 million in three years, and Haidos projects 1999 revenues of $4.5 million.
Haidos attributed the growth to an increase in enrollment 300 this year vs. 275 in 1996 related in part to an advertising campaign. Schwitters forecasts that next year’s enrollment will reach between 350 and 400 “because the market is so solid,” he said. “Kids come out of school and jobs are waiting for them.”
Retention is also up, since the school instituted an advising system to offer support to incoming students. Plus, the school has reduced its financial aid default rate.
Only 30 percent of the students pay cash the remaining 70 percent are on financial aid. If a school’s default rate is 25 percent for three consecutive years, it loses its government certification for the loan program.
When Schwitters and Haidos acquired the school in 1995, nearly a quarter of first-year graduates had defaulted on their loans. Because of more careful screening and tracking of post-grads, this year’s rate is under 10 percent.
“The default rate is kind of a yardstick, so we’re real proud of that achievement,” said Schwitters. “Auditors know that if your default rate is good, the rest of your house is in order.”
Each student spends 12 weeks studying physics, physiology, safety and other classroom-taught subjects, and then takes a basic course in diving, in the school’s three above-ground water tanks. Then they are segregated by specialty.
For dives deeper than 200 feet, students train using a special saturation chamber and diving bell. The tiny capsule-shaped chamber, which contains nothing but four bunks and a toilet, sits on the deck of the boat. Divers descend in the bell to whatever depth they happen to be working at that day, and exit the bell through a trap door in the floor. Once their work is finished, they ascend in the pressurized bell, and once back aboard the boat they transfer from the bell into the pressurized chamber to eat and sleep.
The deeper workers go and the longer they stay there, the longer it takes them to decompress in the chamber. Those working at depths of 1,000 feet, for example, must live in the chamber for at least 10 days to decompress.
Traditionally a male occupation, commercial diving does attract a few women. Each year, about five women graduate.
Traci Konas, a petite, freckle-faced 22-year-old, grew up working in her father’s Simi Valley machine shop, and is now one of the few women in the school.
“You have to be a certain kind of person to do this kind of work,” she said. “You have to be able to work in an all-male atmosphere and be strong, mentally and physically. You have to be able to be down there alone. You really have to be a ’90s woman.”
