Vancouver Institute of Media Arts (VanArts) — Local services in Vancouver

To start, any aspiring artist who is based outside of Canada who wants to attend, please save a little more and look for alternatives, there is no PGWP programs after grad. Your chances of joining the industry here are also higher if you attend school for more than 1 year. At some schools, even if you drop, you are given a computer and tablet too. Even now with their prices comparable to others, this school doesn’t even have a flex lab for grads since its moved from the previous location in Gastown, which was larger. VanArts has a high graduation rate because the majority of the students are internationals who pay a large sum of money for just a year intensive. If you leave before the second term, you’re refunded half and most of these students decide not to leave for good reason. Yes a lot of people graduate, but they don’t show animation job acceptance rates after, which is low because the quality of the animations aren’t up to par for studio work. Studios usually will hire seniors over us, or students who have a solid and confident understanding of animation principles and software (usually have experience) which is hard to achieve in a year intensive. Due to only a year, you wont retain much information either. They teach you basically surface level info you could get off of Youtube easily or some web digging. For some teachers, not all, bash other schools and theres a lot of favouritism. If a student seems good/ has experience they seem to dump more energy and time into their work when they help. Theres 1 teacher per class and 15-30 students. (Yes sickness spreads bad) They go from one to the other to review their work and for SOME reason they only have TAs for the easiest terms (1&2) and none for the hardest terms (3&4) so its usually always one teacher. [To add, why do we even have easily forgettable life drawing assignments in the last most important term?? it adds stress, and you need to finish/pass all in this class in order to graduate.] I’d patiently wait over an hour to get critiqued and boom its lunch, so id have to spend my time going to other teachers while in CLASS or during lunch/ after school for just basic help that I don’t feel like scrubbing on youtube for. Even a teacher shooed me away when I asked for help. Onto the actual studies, on paper the 4 terms seem like a piece of cake, but are so terribly and loosely put together and are constantly changing teachers, study topics, etc. (I hope they changed this, I feel so bad for everyone dealing with it.) It quickly became a nightmare after term 2. Extreme lack of communication between departments, finances even struggled to wire money from a persons bank account who was BORN in Canada. For cleanliness theres one cleaner per night, so they don't sweep the classes (only between terms so 3-4 months) this one scarred me, but urinals leaked green goo and the bathrooms smell heavily of urine. Need I say more? Oh yeah! The location is in a very sketchy area and theft often happens! (Even among students) I know a student who arrived early to get work done due constant computer crashes and went to get breakfast, some guy piggybacked on the elevator and robbed their personal items from the nearest unlocked class which was theirs. At the time, they only had 2 cameras. No compensation. Who in their right mind opens a college with 2 security cameras and no security next to the DTES? Its like they opened a year too soon, unfinished classes/ theatre (construction noises) and the like. Saving the best for last, the one that irks me the most is how teachers turned the juniors onto seniors. They referenced our work as bad examples and what not to do to when they were showing the new students. This was all while we were still attending. They did that for us but with ex grads. This in turn caused unnecessary tensions between everyone and schools should encourage juniors to mingle and ask questions because It literally gets them used to networking which is extremely important within any industry.

I could go on, but those reading and are interested,...

DO. NOT. FALL.FOR. THIS. TRAP. I wish I had done my due diligence before enrolling to Web Development diploma at Vanarts. It was a huge mistake that I paid deeply in financial terms and mostly in terms of wasted time.

And this review is about the web Development diploma only. I can not comment on other diplomas.

First of all, the structure of the program is absolutely ill-conceived. They want you to believe they can make you developer, a designer and a marketing professional. That is not possible. That’s not how the market works, That’s not expected by employers. You will end up a low-qualified professional that won’t be able to find even a junior position. It’s like want to make you a dentist, an optometrist and an audiometrist in a single diploma. Again, they will try to convince you that is good, but that only will make you capable of doing amateurish websites for family and neighbors. You will not make it to a development job.

Second, instructors are bad. Most of them really bad. There are exceptions of course. And really good exceptions, that tried to make up for the ill-conceived course structure. For those, my apologies if you are reading this. But for the bad, they were harmful to my learning and my professional path. I had to learn absolutely outdated concepts and workflows. Not outdated now, but outdated even before the course started. All that led by an apathetic head of department (and instructor in many courses) which always tried to make it clear he did not like to be there and forced down our throats his outdated concepts. And that is bad bad because now I have a double work: I have to unlearn and get rid of bad habits, to learn what I should have learnt at first.

Third, the reputation. If you plan to stay in Canada, no one knows about that school. When you say you are a developer, they will ask: BCIT? Langara? When you say Vanarts, there’s that “pitty” face. Vanarts is seen as just one of those “private for-profit” colleges. It won’t help you.

If you are local, just don’t go for it. You will not end up a developer. You will have a school in your CV that is not recognised as a reference in IT. You will have substandard education, structure and diploma. If you are an international student, then it is a NO GO in capital letters. NO. GO. Besides all the drawbacks I already mentioned, you will not even have a chance of working (and then actually learning something), because that school makes you ineligible to a post-graduate work permit. They will try to hide it. Not to mention it in the hopes you do not ask. But that’s the true.

If you want to pursue that career, first, don’t go to Vanarts. Second, the best way today is self-learning. Udacity, Udemy, YouTube, FreeCodeCamp, EggHead, etc. Those are way more effective and way cheaper. And you will be more updated. If you really want a brick and mortar school, the ones that are really reference in Vancouver (that employers know about) are Langara and BCIT (specially if you are foreigner and plans to stay after) and Red Academy and Lighthouse Labs (private shorter bootcamps)

If you have any additional question about the program, don’t fall for the marketing team (they are good at hiding the dark side) or the two alumni that they direct you. Yes, from the big number of students, only two accept give good testimonials, and those were students 4 batches ago. From my group and even the one before, no one would accept to give a testimonial. Specially a...

I am actually a full time student in Van Arts Web Development program. This is the most relevant information I can provide. About 3 weeks ago our department head suddenly left and we have not been able to get a proper education. We all pay the tuition and we should be able to get a high quality education. Since the instructor changed, one of the instructor for PHP and Javascript never came on time, he will not teach us enough. Also he will never give us break and continue the class past our lunch time. Because of his delay, we have not been taught enough in term2 so far. All the students are frustrated, worried and concerned about the situation. We have been sending emails to school but nothing has been better. Another instructor started teaching us PHP from this week but he seems like he does not know what we have learned so far... None of the communication has been done between instructors. We thought this new instructor will be better. But he does not answer questions from students and finish the class early. My classmates and I really want to change this whole situation because we take our education seriously. We emailed this new instructor to have a talk on Friday. He said he will make time but he did not show up.... I am very upset about how school is handling everything and no one cares about our education. My classmates and I are trying our best but nothing has been working well. I hate to write a poor review but this is the reality and I do not recommend anyone to go to this school. When you have problems, none of the instructors are there to understand or support you. I do not think it is worth to pay an expensive tuition and get nothing from it. I do not know about other programs but I do not recommend web development program. It is not a...