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Aware of the stigma surrounding training institutes and unrecognized diplomas, Qantm College London is keen to stress its unique position aside from traditional learning. Having expanded from its native Australia to offices around the globe, many positioned in development hotbeds, it enjoys an intimate relationship with both games and new media, its facilities mirroring those at use in the industry. Most of its lecturers and speakers come fresh from modern development, though all recognise the need to refine and update their own skills before passing them on to others. Offering his perspective on Qantm’s courses and philosophy, marketing manager Nic Oliver tells us more.

What is Qantm’s history?

Qantm started in Australia in the mid-’90s. It was formed originally by a group of Australian universities that needed a specialist college for running multimedia courses. In 2004, there were some issues with the college and the SAE group bought it out, becoming the operator in Australia.

Because of SAE’s international presence, we started to introduce Qantm alongside our SAE locations around the world. So it started in Brisbane, moved to Melbourne and Sydney, and has since moved to places like Berlin and London. We’ll soon be opening in Tokyo.

Where between a university and a training institute does Qantm lie?

Qantm as a whole is very specialised – it’s hard to pinpoint relative to other types of training. The main comparison would be a university, really, in the educational sense. In terms of facilities and style, it could really only be compared to an industry training facility. Qantm does the diplomas, degrees and masters courses that a university would do, but it has the facilities that only a high-end studio or commercial entity would have. It’s like a hybrid.

Can a private institute match the scope of a university education?

We have our industry advisory boards, head lecturers and course coordinators. The way we handle the academic side of things is that we’re validated through Middlesex University for our course programmes. They allow quite a lot of flexibility for the content as they appreciate we’re the specialists and that our staff are the ones with industry experience. Universities might also make you major and minor in subjects whereas at Qantm you only learn what you’ve gone there to learn. So if you’re doing a 3D animation course, you won’t be doing a History or Geography minor. And the degrees and diplomas are accelerated, so you could have a BA (Hons) in two years. We’re not cutting out the content the universities would give, we’re cutting out the three or so months of holiday.



How popular are the courses? Do you need to expand?

We do. The London office is already looking to expand in 2009 because of the interest. Brisbane is one of our larger sites and even they’ve expanded recently. Whilst some universities are doing a very good job, people find it hard sifting through all those bad universities to get to everyone else. Qantm sits to the side of everyone else – it’s just there – with a well-respected government and industry reputation.