I actually went to college for 3D animation but never entered the field. Didn't like it, and ended up going IT, but that is a whole other story.
I was in college about 8 years ago, and I was using 3DsMax, Softimage, and Maya. I see that the newer versions come with all kinds of preloaded textures and templates for things these days which makes it easier to use
I actually learned 3D rendering on an applicaiton called True Space (like version 3 i think) and it would take my computer at school about 3 full days to render a full scene. This was back before render farms were around.
I really hated it when some jerk rebooted my PC when it was rendering.