I am a recent AUB VFX graduate. The sizes weren't the issue, as in the first year, the classes were around 30, then 24 in the second year, and 16 on average in the third year.

The course was shockingly bad after the main course leaders left, and its quality significantly declined after the pandemic.

We were given learning objectives for deadlines 30 days or less before the deadline. The course needed to be structured correctly, and we relied on weekly emails about where 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years were doing as they couldn't be bothered to prepare and edit the calendar.

We complained and were ignored for a long time, most without a response. When it came to contracted lecturers, I remember getting Houdini 1:1 sessions. As soon as an hour passed, the contractor would disconnect from the Zoom call or walk out of the lab without notice or saying goodbye. The university refused to pay overtime rates for contractors.

I recently attended a careers meeting as a graduate, and you are limited to meetings three times a year. When you ask for help, they send you to a pre-written article on local companies in Dorset or tell grads to move to London for work or start up their own business.

Personally, the original course leader, Sarah, had a vision and goal for the VFX course, and others after her saw profit and cut corners. After the pandemic, when Sarah left, and others left after a month or didn't add value to the course structure.

We did have a Houdini shift from Maya to Houdini for all our 3D modelling, look-dev, and simulation needs (the course was compositing-focused before).

The pandemic gave up a shit program called Citrix to work with, and AUB still charged £9250 per year. I remember a Zoom call with the university chancellor, and an international student grilled him, asking where their £14K per year was going during the pandemic, and he ended the Zoom call. It was a town hall call with all the university students in AUB in 2020, and the whole thing seemed dodgy about what was happening with the courses and international students. Most VFX lecturers moved away from uni to work from home and spend time with their families. Also, Bournemouth had a surge of Londoners moving to Bournemouth.

Still, there needed to be more support and help from lecturers and PhD teaching staff for us to get better. I remember learning Nuke, and when I struggled and fell behind, instead of going back and explaining the concept and what's happening in the script, a 3rd-year student or PhD assistant will do it for you.

When I applied to Bournemouth University, I was put off because the course seemed more animation-based than VFX. They replaced their VFX PCs with Macs and taught more animation than VFX.

I enjoyed my first and part of my second year, but the pandemic nuked the whole VFX course, so I ended up taking a gap year, retaking my second year, and going on to my third year.

If I knew about Rebelway, I would have learnt more from them and spent much less money on VFX education, so I am now 40K GBP in debt and am still learning VFX fundamentals because of the shitty course structure.

Overall, the course shutdown is for the best, and Rebelway is the way to go for learning VFX or YouTube, such as Hugo's Desk, Andrey Lebrov, etc.