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QANTM reviews.

Submitted by sammole on

Hey guys,

I'm seriously considering doin a CUF50107 Diploma of Screen and Media (with a specialisation in Animation) online from QANTM Brisbane, i have done some googling and have found some people saying how poor their course was an not recommending it at all, having said that, it was from 2005 and i cant really find anything more recent.

Is their anyone here who may be able to shed some light on the current quality of QANTM courses and if it is something i will get value from.

Thankyou very much

Sam

Submitted by Ben (not verified) on Sun, 22/04/12 - 7:41 PM Permalink

Wow. Mate I have been so ambitious to head straight to Qantm after high school, as I am only in grade 11 at present, and do my Bachelor in Games Design, but is it really that bad? I was under what appears to be the most WRONG influence in my life! I've been told, and have read, that Qantm stand out in that industry! I've heard that it's very professional and passionate at teaching that stuff man! Fuck! Now I'll have to look else where I guess. Thanks for your essay-style heads up man! By the way, how old are you?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 11/05/12 - 7:38 AM Permalink

Howdy howdy guys,

I hope people still read this thread, I think it's a very good insight for prospective and current animation students graduating in the near future. I speak on behalf of animation and not programming, I'm a past graduate at Qantm Sydney College (2009) and a current working professional in the industry. I recently got employed by Gameloft to head up the animation division, I'd like to share some of my comments and views so that hopefully people won't have to relive my experience. Let me just sum up by saying CG is a tough field to get into, and those wanting to major in animation PREPARE TO WORK YOUR BUTT OFF! I wasn't a bright student at Qantm, I wasn't willing to develop my skills further, to be honest it felt like they were teaching me the software and not much about the art (problems with most animation schools) and I lost interest over time. Let me just clarify something, your experience at Qantm shouldn't only be about learning the software, that is the required standards in the industry. It should be about the artist INSIDE YOU and how you can manipulate the software to bring YOUR vision to life. Companies want to see that in your showreel, that's why I think Qantm students who learn too much in 2 years and in delve into too many different areas like modeling, texture, animation, rendering, lighting, rigging, game design, storyboarding will NEVER get that chance to hone and develop their craft.

Students should focus on specializing and honing ONE particular skill, this industry is built upon that. If I had to make a negative comment on what Qantm were doing I think it was that, and their inability to find teachers who are specialized in certain fields (they would only hire generalist teachers to teach their subjects). In my opinion if your in the course now, go to your curriculum manager AND FORCE THEM TO HIRE MORE SPECIALISED TEACHERS in the fields your studying. If you look at past job posting my qantm they are all generalist positions for teachers, and for a school like Qantm with the amount of money they receive from students, THEY CAN AFFORD IT.

I can't comment if being at Qantm has benefited me as an artist, because I didn't meet the standard level of commitment which the school has asked for, but I will say I definitely wouldn't been able to travel overseas and work without a bachelor degree certificate. You could almost say I paid my tuition fees for a certificate to work overseas!

Also, please be very wary of professionals claiming to have 10 years experience in the industry, I think it's very translucent for someone to introduce themselves based on how many years they've worked. Quality of someone's work should always emphasize their level of experience. I've known people who have worked their butt off for 2 years with no industry experience and are now working for Dreamworks California and Disney Studio in Glendale (my dream of being there, a long way from Qantm Sydney I must add!).

I would say I have a 'quality' showreel after a year of slavishly working through. I remember at Qantm I was only given 3 weeks to put something together (it might've changed now) and that's just not enough time. A showreel is something that will make or break your chances at a desired position. It's important to know what you include in a showreel and how you present it. Do your research on what the perfect and desired showreel is, CATER your showreel to what that company looks for. DO NOT send character animation work to a previz or architecture company. If there's a company you want to work for LOOK AND RESEARCH what they do, then go out and LEARN as much as you can. I was never taught 3ds Max at Qantm, I was mainly a Maya user. I got given a game test for Gameloft, I spent 2 days learning the software. I applied my strong animation foundations into the test. The total time was 4 days to complete, and I immediately got the job.

Also this is the mentality that you need to keep in mind "Is my own personal work similiar or better then a current professional working in that company I'm trying to apply for", if it isn't how can I continuously improve on it? FYI the Australia market for animation is very VERY competitive, they recently laid off 600 staff from DR D studios with Happy Feet 2 wrapping up. That's 600 people LOOKING for jobs!

Let me just sum up by saying DO NOT BLAME YOUR SCHOOL IF YOU DO NOT GET A JOB. I did ever since graduating after a year of no successful attempts, and I realized it's because I wasn't committed to my studies. If I had the journey to where I am now would've been a lot easier. Also degrees doesn't = job, your own personal work and style as an artist will need to do that. There are a lot of fantastic animation programs out there, i.e. AnimSchool, animation mentor! I highly recommend them!

I've gone off on a tangent a little but I hope some of this has been useful to you. If you would like to get in reach with me my email is oddly_enough@live.com, I would be happy to hear from any current students (prospective students I don't really have much insight into how the school is runned nowadays).

Peace!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 11/05/12 - 12:00 PM Permalink

Went to QANTM Sydney as well, it's rubbish; and as a direct result from the school's inadequate teachers and inconsistent material I wasn't qualified for entry level jobs which other universities would have prepared me for (it's been a few years and I'm working in the game industry as well now).

If you aren't committed then nothing will help, not even the best school in the world (which QANTM Sydney is not). If you are committed and try hard QANTM is still insufficient to to give you the basic tools... I personally tried to change and help the school but to no avail, I know to know avail since I know of at least one person to have been fired from an entry level position halfway through their probational period specifically because QANTM provided them with nothing useful. The rubbish teachers are still there, the rubbish teaching is still there. The management in QANTM are interested in money and little else...

Submitted by reilly (not verified) on Tue, 23/10/12 - 4:41 PM Permalink

I'm planning on studying the Diploma of Screen and Media (with a specialisation in Animation) online when i get the money together, i have done many years in tafe and Ive seen so much lack in teacher quality.

I have failed at some courses due to the fact i was more knowledgeable then the teacher, so didn't get a chance to finish my own work in time, from helping others to understand the basics.

My largest hurdle is non English speaking tutors, when your provided a talk you expect to either be able to understand it, or have written copies.

I pulled out of tafe a couple years ago, due to a Finnish teacher (a) not being able to speak clearly and (b) not understanding English well enough.

Submitted by mc (not verified) on Mon, 05/11/12 - 2:06 PM Permalink

I completed a diploma of interactive digital media online and the level of support was so bad they never write back to emails. Rude teachers, insulting avoid like the plague

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 20/11/12 - 5:53 AM Permalink

the 'specializing' comment holds true - and it makes me wonder if many people here considered doing a specialized degree then? a "games" degree is a jack of all trades program... you thought "i wanna be a games developer" and went to the program that sounded closest to that? I'm not sure if people were expecting that 3 years was enough, it's not.

but... do you want to be a software engineer, a ux designer, an animator, an artist, in the production/management side of things? ALL of those positions in a studio are specialized fields and ALL of these positions have full-time, dedicated degree programs for you - IF you want to study.

I did computer science and am now a tech director at an overseas AAA developer, nothing in my studies was about games... other senior and successful colleagues of mine also hold bachelors in their specialized fields, usually an art director will hold a degree of fine arts, similar to animators (the real world meaning of animators, not qantm's definition).... similarly, if you think you want to be part of the business side, then go study precisely that

Don't do a jack of all trades course and then complain that you're sub-par at everything... you got precisely what you paid for, if you want to be a programmer, learn the real shit, then APPLY that to game development... if you want to be a designer, do a design only course then APPLY that to game development - again, nothing in my studies was about games, but it taught me EVERYTHING about how to make games... in the sense that games are highly optimized software

Games dev is the application of these fundamentals in art, design, engineering (and more) even though the fundamentals aren't about games dev at all!

Find a field you have a passion for... study it, live & breath it, then apply it to games development, the rest of the stuff (the fields you didn't study) you'll learn in the first 6 months of hanging around experts in those fields anyway ;)

my 2c anyway :)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 30/11/12 - 2:38 PM Permalink

I'm doing the Game Design Degree over 3 years instead of the accelerated 2 at the Melbourne Campus. I've been there for 2 years now and i can honestly say its been a real learning experience for me. I did 2 years at Deakin University and hated every minute of it. I was in lectures with 100 other students being talked at and the lectures were like 30-40 people. Being a private institution, the place has a lot fewer students and you get to know your teachers there. I know that in Melbourne there are quite a few teachers who have worked in the industry on big name titles (both games and film) so the comments about a lack of competent teachers is bull. Of course, i do understand that everyone has their own learning style, so if being taught with a very hands off approach works for you, then by all means, go to a large state university.

If you are going to do the course over 2 years, be ready to work your arse off. Many students dont have casual jobs or only do a few shifts a week at best because there just isnt time for it. You are expected to do 6 hours of independent study per subject per week. 12 contact hours per week (4 subjects, 1 hour lectures, 2 hour tutorials), plus 24 hours of independent study equals 36 hours of study a week. Pretty much a full time job. So if you're just too lazy to do the work and complain about it being "pointless", don't go. Most people who drop out do so in the first 6 weeks of study. The work load is either too much for them or they find that learning to make games isnt just about playing them. There is going to be hard work involved.

I do agree that some of the hardware needs to be upgraded. The only decent computer there to do any animation stuff on is the macs, and really, they are not that great. I did a UDK assignment and ended up bringing my pc rig in for an all night study session so i wasnt wasting 6 hours for the UDK level to load entirely. No exaggerating, 6 HOURS. My pc did it in under 10 minutes. This is the only negative i have towards Qantm though.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 19/12/12 - 8:52 PM Permalink

I graduated from Qantm Brisbane doing Interactive Media. I can say I enjoyed my time there, although found it somewhat lacking. Teachers didn't really seem to know their stuff all that well and some of the work was a little easy. The chairs were frankly awful, although the computers got much better during my course.
The atmosphere at Qantm is great and really appealed to me. Everyone was really chill about everything, no one was really stressed out. You know your tutors really by the end and always get 1 on 1 attention. I think what made it good was that the workload was very small and you were encouraged to forge your own path based on what you learned and show it off. The people who just rocked up and done the very least work ended up having to dropping out or had very poor skills at the end of the course. So personally I spent my time learned development and trying to design and build games. In the end, I was able to get a good job though industry links and industry links is what Qantm seems to be good at.
Caution as far as game design, dev and animation go, my understanding is there is very little jobs around, at least in Brisbane. I'm pretty sure I remember the game designers being told day one that they wouldn't even get a job out of it.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 29/12/12 - 10:14 PM Permalink

I am preparing to study a Bachelor of Creative media (graphic design) at Qantum Brisbane.

god i hope its not like all of you describe.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 11/01/13 - 12:50 PM Permalink

Well, being an ex-QANTM trainer, let me give you guys some hard truths. Learning to be a good game developer is hard. It CAN'T be done in two years. It can't be done solely by completing a course in game dev. It takes a lot of personal time, coding, coding, inbetween learning more about coding, practicing coding and reading about coding. The trouble with QANTM is that it attracts an awful lot of students that can best be described as:
hurrrrr. Me like play games. Me must want to be game dev. Me know nothing about game dev, or coding, or hard work, or dedication, did poorly at highschool, but parents have lots of money to send me to QANTM.

So as a teacher, you have a class that's 80% dummies that aren't focused, NEED to be hand-held constantly (thus holding back the rest of the class), who complete the course by doing the bare minimum, dedicating most of their spare time to watching manga and playing games, and then pop out the other end wondering why they didn't magically transform into an expert 1337 game developer and blame QANTM and their trainers for it.

Then there is also the exception of a handful of outstanding students who come into the course already with a moderate skill level and go on to become much better in a two year space, show good dedication, and in some cases by the end of it they've got comparable skills to the trainers themselves. But naturally, they're looking to get into the game dev industry, which in itself is a whole 'nother challenge. These students can understandably feel their trainers did not give enough to them, because the equation for the teacher is to get as many students to "pass" level as possible; if they KNOW that you're already "pass" material, they're going to have to spend more time with the dummies and rely on YOU to push yourself and your skills to get to "exceptional" level.

This kind of sucks for the exceptional students, but I can't see a better way of doing things. You couldn't feasibly start a game-dev training school that only hones good students into exceptional ones, because frankly the good students are so rare that you wouldn't get enough enrollments to make the school profitable.

Also, it is true that it's tough to find a job in game-dev in Australia, but I did. And even if you can't, your skills transfer over a whole range of other potential jobs so if you do the work and make the most of the course, you'll come out more employable than when you went it, and if you play the networking game you'll open other employment opportunities and interests as well. Just like any uni course, a lot of what you will get out, depends on how much you put in.

Finally, there's obviously a bunch of QANTMs around the country. Just because the courses or trainers were crap in a particular QANTM in a particular intake of students doesn't mean the same applies for all the rest or future courses. I started training at QANTM on the back-end of an intake of students that had been thoroughly f*cked around when a bunch of their trainers suddenly up and left the company. The following intake of students went much more smoothly and didn't endure a change of trainers at all. Bad/Good luck happens, and I would assume that these days the course material is much more consistent regardless of the trainers.

Posted by sammole on

Hey guys,

I'm seriously considering doin a CUF50107 Diploma of Screen and Media (with a specialisation in Animation) online from QANTM Brisbane, i have done some googling and have found some people saying how poor their course was an not recommending it at all, having said that, it was from 2005 and i cant really find anything more recent.

Is their anyone here who may be able to shed some light on the current quality of QANTM courses and if it is something i will get value from.

Thankyou very much

Sam


Submitted by Ben (not verified) on Sun, 22/04/12 - 7:41 PM Permalink

Wow. Mate I have been so ambitious to head straight to Qantm after high school, as I am only in grade 11 at present, and do my Bachelor in Games Design, but is it really that bad? I was under what appears to be the most WRONG influence in my life! I've been told, and have read, that Qantm stand out in that industry! I've heard that it's very professional and passionate at teaching that stuff man! Fuck! Now I'll have to look else where I guess. Thanks for your essay-style heads up man! By the way, how old are you?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 11/05/12 - 7:38 AM Permalink

Howdy howdy guys,

I hope people still read this thread, I think it's a very good insight for prospective and current animation students graduating in the near future. I speak on behalf of animation and not programming, I'm a past graduate at Qantm Sydney College (2009) and a current working professional in the industry. I recently got employed by Gameloft to head up the animation division, I'd like to share some of my comments and views so that hopefully people won't have to relive my experience. Let me just sum up by saying CG is a tough field to get into, and those wanting to major in animation PREPARE TO WORK YOUR BUTT OFF! I wasn't a bright student at Qantm, I wasn't willing to develop my skills further, to be honest it felt like they were teaching me the software and not much about the art (problems with most animation schools) and I lost interest over time. Let me just clarify something, your experience at Qantm shouldn't only be about learning the software, that is the required standards in the industry. It should be about the artist INSIDE YOU and how you can manipulate the software to bring YOUR vision to life. Companies want to see that in your showreel, that's why I think Qantm students who learn too much in 2 years and in delve into too many different areas like modeling, texture, animation, rendering, lighting, rigging, game design, storyboarding will NEVER get that chance to hone and develop their craft.

Students should focus on specializing and honing ONE particular skill, this industry is built upon that. If I had to make a negative comment on what Qantm were doing I think it was that, and their inability to find teachers who are specialized in certain fields (they would only hire generalist teachers to teach their subjects). In my opinion if your in the course now, go to your curriculum manager AND FORCE THEM TO HIRE MORE SPECIALISED TEACHERS in the fields your studying. If you look at past job posting my qantm they are all generalist positions for teachers, and for a school like Qantm with the amount of money they receive from students, THEY CAN AFFORD IT.

I can't comment if being at Qantm has benefited me as an artist, because I didn't meet the standard level of commitment which the school has asked for, but I will say I definitely wouldn't been able to travel overseas and work without a bachelor degree certificate. You could almost say I paid my tuition fees for a certificate to work overseas!

Also, please be very wary of professionals claiming to have 10 years experience in the industry, I think it's very translucent for someone to introduce themselves based on how many years they've worked. Quality of someone's work should always emphasize their level of experience. I've known people who have worked their butt off for 2 years with no industry experience and are now working for Dreamworks California and Disney Studio in Glendale (my dream of being there, a long way from Qantm Sydney I must add!).

I would say I have a 'quality' showreel after a year of slavishly working through. I remember at Qantm I was only given 3 weeks to put something together (it might've changed now) and that's just not enough time. A showreel is something that will make or break your chances at a desired position. It's important to know what you include in a showreel and how you present it. Do your research on what the perfect and desired showreel is, CATER your showreel to what that company looks for. DO NOT send character animation work to a previz or architecture company. If there's a company you want to work for LOOK AND RESEARCH what they do, then go out and LEARN as much as you can. I was never taught 3ds Max at Qantm, I was mainly a Maya user. I got given a game test for Gameloft, I spent 2 days learning the software. I applied my strong animation foundations into the test. The total time was 4 days to complete, and I immediately got the job.

Also this is the mentality that you need to keep in mind "Is my own personal work similiar or better then a current professional working in that company I'm trying to apply for", if it isn't how can I continuously improve on it? FYI the Australia market for animation is very VERY competitive, they recently laid off 600 staff from DR D studios with Happy Feet 2 wrapping up. That's 600 people LOOKING for jobs!

Let me just sum up by saying DO NOT BLAME YOUR SCHOOL IF YOU DO NOT GET A JOB. I did ever since graduating after a year of no successful attempts, and I realized it's because I wasn't committed to my studies. If I had the journey to where I am now would've been a lot easier. Also degrees doesn't = job, your own personal work and style as an artist will need to do that. There are a lot of fantastic animation programs out there, i.e. AnimSchool, animation mentor! I highly recommend them!

I've gone off on a tangent a little but I hope some of this has been useful to you. If you would like to get in reach with me my email is oddly_enough@live.com, I would be happy to hear from any current students (prospective students I don't really have much insight into how the school is runned nowadays).

Peace!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 11/05/12 - 12:00 PM Permalink

Went to QANTM Sydney as well, it's rubbish; and as a direct result from the school's inadequate teachers and inconsistent material I wasn't qualified for entry level jobs which other universities would have prepared me for (it's been a few years and I'm working in the game industry as well now).

If you aren't committed then nothing will help, not even the best school in the world (which QANTM Sydney is not). If you are committed and try hard QANTM is still insufficient to to give you the basic tools... I personally tried to change and help the school but to no avail, I know to know avail since I know of at least one person to have been fired from an entry level position halfway through their probational period specifically because QANTM provided them with nothing useful. The rubbish teachers are still there, the rubbish teaching is still there. The management in QANTM are interested in money and little else...

Submitted by reilly (not verified) on Tue, 23/10/12 - 4:41 PM Permalink

I'm planning on studying the Diploma of Screen and Media (with a specialisation in Animation) online when i get the money together, i have done many years in tafe and Ive seen so much lack in teacher quality.

I have failed at some courses due to the fact i was more knowledgeable then the teacher, so didn't get a chance to finish my own work in time, from helping others to understand the basics.

My largest hurdle is non English speaking tutors, when your provided a talk you expect to either be able to understand it, or have written copies.

I pulled out of tafe a couple years ago, due to a Finnish teacher (a) not being able to speak clearly and (b) not understanding English well enough.

Submitted by mc (not verified) on Mon, 05/11/12 - 2:06 PM Permalink

I completed a diploma of interactive digital media online and the level of support was so bad they never write back to emails. Rude teachers, insulting avoid like the plague

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 20/11/12 - 5:53 AM Permalink

the 'specializing' comment holds true - and it makes me wonder if many people here considered doing a specialized degree then? a "games" degree is a jack of all trades program... you thought "i wanna be a games developer" and went to the program that sounded closest to that? I'm not sure if people were expecting that 3 years was enough, it's not.

but... do you want to be a software engineer, a ux designer, an animator, an artist, in the production/management side of things? ALL of those positions in a studio are specialized fields and ALL of these positions have full-time, dedicated degree programs for you - IF you want to study.

I did computer science and am now a tech director at an overseas AAA developer, nothing in my studies was about games... other senior and successful colleagues of mine also hold bachelors in their specialized fields, usually an art director will hold a degree of fine arts, similar to animators (the real world meaning of animators, not qantm's definition).... similarly, if you think you want to be part of the business side, then go study precisely that

Don't do a jack of all trades course and then complain that you're sub-par at everything... you got precisely what you paid for, if you want to be a programmer, learn the real shit, then APPLY that to game development... if you want to be a designer, do a design only course then APPLY that to game development - again, nothing in my studies was about games, but it taught me EVERYTHING about how to make games... in the sense that games are highly optimized software

Games dev is the application of these fundamentals in art, design, engineering (and more) even though the fundamentals aren't about games dev at all!

Find a field you have a passion for... study it, live & breath it, then apply it to games development, the rest of the stuff (the fields you didn't study) you'll learn in the first 6 months of hanging around experts in those fields anyway ;)

my 2c anyway :)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 30/11/12 - 2:38 PM Permalink

I'm doing the Game Design Degree over 3 years instead of the accelerated 2 at the Melbourne Campus. I've been there for 2 years now and i can honestly say its been a real learning experience for me. I did 2 years at Deakin University and hated every minute of it. I was in lectures with 100 other students being talked at and the lectures were like 30-40 people. Being a private institution, the place has a lot fewer students and you get to know your teachers there. I know that in Melbourne there are quite a few teachers who have worked in the industry on big name titles (both games and film) so the comments about a lack of competent teachers is bull. Of course, i do understand that everyone has their own learning style, so if being taught with a very hands off approach works for you, then by all means, go to a large state university.

If you are going to do the course over 2 years, be ready to work your arse off. Many students dont have casual jobs or only do a few shifts a week at best because there just isnt time for it. You are expected to do 6 hours of independent study per subject per week. 12 contact hours per week (4 subjects, 1 hour lectures, 2 hour tutorials), plus 24 hours of independent study equals 36 hours of study a week. Pretty much a full time job. So if you're just too lazy to do the work and complain about it being "pointless", don't go. Most people who drop out do so in the first 6 weeks of study. The work load is either too much for them or they find that learning to make games isnt just about playing them. There is going to be hard work involved.

I do agree that some of the hardware needs to be upgraded. The only decent computer there to do any animation stuff on is the macs, and really, they are not that great. I did a UDK assignment and ended up bringing my pc rig in for an all night study session so i wasnt wasting 6 hours for the UDK level to load entirely. No exaggerating, 6 HOURS. My pc did it in under 10 minutes. This is the only negative i have towards Qantm though.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 19/12/12 - 8:52 PM Permalink

I graduated from Qantm Brisbane doing Interactive Media. I can say I enjoyed my time there, although found it somewhat lacking. Teachers didn't really seem to know their stuff all that well and some of the work was a little easy. The chairs were frankly awful, although the computers got much better during my course.
The atmosphere at Qantm is great and really appealed to me. Everyone was really chill about everything, no one was really stressed out. You know your tutors really by the end and always get 1 on 1 attention. I think what made it good was that the workload was very small and you were encouraged to forge your own path based on what you learned and show it off. The people who just rocked up and done the very least work ended up having to dropping out or had very poor skills at the end of the course. So personally I spent my time learned development and trying to design and build games. In the end, I was able to get a good job though industry links and industry links is what Qantm seems to be good at.
Caution as far as game design, dev and animation go, my understanding is there is very little jobs around, at least in Brisbane. I'm pretty sure I remember the game designers being told day one that they wouldn't even get a job out of it.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 29/12/12 - 10:14 PM Permalink

I am preparing to study a Bachelor of Creative media (graphic design) at Qantum Brisbane.

god i hope its not like all of you describe.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 11/01/13 - 12:50 PM Permalink

Well, being an ex-QANTM trainer, let me give you guys some hard truths. Learning to be a good game developer is hard. It CAN'T be done in two years. It can't be done solely by completing a course in game dev. It takes a lot of personal time, coding, coding, inbetween learning more about coding, practicing coding and reading about coding. The trouble with QANTM is that it attracts an awful lot of students that can best be described as:
hurrrrr. Me like play games. Me must want to be game dev. Me know nothing about game dev, or coding, or hard work, or dedication, did poorly at highschool, but parents have lots of money to send me to QANTM.

So as a teacher, you have a class that's 80% dummies that aren't focused, NEED to be hand-held constantly (thus holding back the rest of the class), who complete the course by doing the bare minimum, dedicating most of their spare time to watching manga and playing games, and then pop out the other end wondering why they didn't magically transform into an expert 1337 game developer and blame QANTM and their trainers for it.

Then there is also the exception of a handful of outstanding students who come into the course already with a moderate skill level and go on to become much better in a two year space, show good dedication, and in some cases by the end of it they've got comparable skills to the trainers themselves. But naturally, they're looking to get into the game dev industry, which in itself is a whole 'nother challenge. These students can understandably feel their trainers did not give enough to them, because the equation for the teacher is to get as many students to "pass" level as possible; if they KNOW that you're already "pass" material, they're going to have to spend more time with the dummies and rely on YOU to push yourself and your skills to get to "exceptional" level.

This kind of sucks for the exceptional students, but I can't see a better way of doing things. You couldn't feasibly start a game-dev training school that only hones good students into exceptional ones, because frankly the good students are so rare that you wouldn't get enough enrollments to make the school profitable.

Also, it is true that it's tough to find a job in game-dev in Australia, but I did. And even if you can't, your skills transfer over a whole range of other potential jobs so if you do the work and make the most of the course, you'll come out more employable than when you went it, and if you play the networking game you'll open other employment opportunities and interests as well. Just like any uni course, a lot of what you will get out, depends on how much you put in.

Finally, there's obviously a bunch of QANTMs around the country. Just because the courses or trainers were crap in a particular QANTM in a particular intake of students doesn't mean the same applies for all the rest or future courses. I started training at QANTM on the back-end of an intake of students that had been thoroughly f*cked around when a bunch of their trainers suddenly up and left the company. The following intake of students went much more smoothly and didn't endure a change of trainers at all. Bad/Good luck happens, and I would assume that these days the course material is much more consistent regardless of the trainers.