19 year old Christian Carbajal sure seems to think so because he just landed a job at a large design firm after recently completing his four month training program. Edese Doret Industries is a large industrial design firm that has worked on projects for hotels, retail stores, corporate offices, airlines and yachts. They hired Carbajal based on his student work at the 3D Training Institute (3DTI).
Like many high school grads, Carbajal was pressured to attend a traditional four-year college along with his friends. But the prospect of burying himself in student loan debt, or struggling for four years to obtain a degree that was no guarantee of a job wasn’t especially an exciting prospect for him.
“I always thought of myself as an artist. I was drawing stick figures when I was only 3 years old and playing the guitar and piano at 4. I started playing video games at 8, and then got into acting and singing when I was 9 years old. At 12, I was intrigued by anatomy, and at 15, I was studying martial arts,” explained Carbajal. “Throughout the years of watching cool and shiny movies and playing creative video games, I would think to myself, ‘Wow’ that’s what I want to do. Once I graduated from high school, I dove into 3D Training Institute, which is a great place for ambitious people to develop the professional skills needed to be successful in the 3D industry.”
Carbajal chose 3DTI’s Fast Track program and selected Autodesk’s Maya as his field of study. It is a production-based training program that allowed him to earn his qualification in the 3D modelling software within four months. Because the training program is a simulated on the job environment he was able to build a resume while he went to school. And all of his classes were held live in real time with a real instructor. There was no need to travel to a university or live on campus, and his instructor was available to him just as any instructor would be.
Generally I have a rather poor opinion of for profit and tech training schools. The instruction tends to be subpar and the rate of career placements is laughably dire. Mixed with predatory student loans and school recruiters who encourage classes that aren’t needed, they can often be a money hole just as deep as a traditional education. But while on the surface it seems that 3DTI is the same sort of operation, when I looked further into them I started to have my doubts.
3D Training Institute was formed by a 3D design and consulting company called 3D Mirage when the production-based training program they designed for new employees was more successful than they imagined. Because they found it so successful they decided to adapt it to a certification program and offer it to students and artists who were not employees.
While I’m still leery of any sort of certification program that presents itself as an alternative to a four-year college course, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have their place. College is more than job training, and we need to stop looking at it as such. But not everyone wants a college experience or they are simply looking for skills to enhance their existing degrees, so there is a real need for training programs like this.
I didn’t find a lot of negative reviews of the program, and 3DTI does offer a free class to let you see if it’s a system that will work for you. So if you’re just looking for training in some key areas, you may want to give 3DTI a shot. It seemed to have worked out for Christian Carbajal.
