Student Retention

[TMAA]

School owners: what percentage of your students stay around long enough to get their first degree black belt? Out of those, how many become instructors, or stay afterwards to work toward higher degrees?

 

Thanks.

[Shorinryu Sensei]

A lot of it depends on what sort of a dojo you have I think. A "McDojo" that passes out black belts like so much confetti will have black belts of all ages (4 years and up) within under 2 years (I've seen 13 months to BB locally).

 

Of those that become instructors...for me, I'd say that when they get their BB, they are qualified to teach. It is a pre-requisite ofmine taht they don't get a BB unless they can teach it.

 

As for getting higher degrees than 1st degree black belt...probably around 1 in 10 maybe. The higher you go, the smaller that percentage gets.

[foreveryoung001]

I have not been formally teaching long enough to have any students at that level. I can tell you that three of us, from instructors original class stayed around long enough to take our 1st dan test. Two of us made it the first time, the thrid person had to test again, but we all eventually got there. Only one of us ( not me) persued anything further. I quit training not long after my test due to several different reasons, but I don't know how I fit into the statistics because I have been back training again for quite a while, and have now have a few students of my own, but for all intensive purposes, I had quit and didn't intend to continue until my children decided to get involved. That rekindled the fire.

[Squawman]

We have about 50 black belts at our school now mostly 1st dan, about 8-10 2nd dan and 2 3rd dan. They range in age from 10 - 30 years of age and all of them took at least 3 years to get their black belt. Out of all of these only a few are assistant instructors and just a couple are allowed to run a class. This is mostly because of age (very few parents want a 15 year old teaching there child) and because they don't have the expirence. I have heard of alot of schools that lose their black belts because they are forced to teach and also the instructor doesn't give them any new stuff to work on after their 1st dan. Our black belt retention is good because we have black belt only classes and are actually thinking of putting in 2nd and 3rd dan only classes.

 

https://www.mafc.net

[Shorinryu Sensei]

We have about 50 black belts at our school now mostly 1st dan, about 8-10 2nd dan and 2 3rd dan. They range in age from 10 - 30 years of age and all of them took at least 3 years to get their black belt. Out of all of these only a few are assistant instructors and just a couple are allowed to run a class. This is mostly because of age (very few parents want a 15 year old teaching there child) and because they don't have the expirence. I have heard of alot of schools that lose their black belts because they are forced to teach and also the instructor doesn't give them any new stuff to work on after their 1st dan. Our black belt retention is good because we have black belt only classes and are actually thinking of putting in 2nd and 3rd dan only classes.

 

https://www.mafc.net

 

How many people in the entire dojo? 50 black belts is a LOT...and some are 10 years of age?

[Squawman]

We have around 230 active students.

[Carnage]

Whoa, my school has 900 active. We have about a hundred black belts.

[Shorinryu Sensei]

We have around 230 active students.

 

That's about 22% black belts. Over 1 in 5 students are black belts. That's pretty top heavy rank-wise.