There's a really good mod for this - even if I can't currently remember what it's called but I can look it up if you want - that lets you reduce it easily. I've brought it down to 9 but might go for 6 like @jimbbq, especially in households with multiple students, because having 3 sims do their degree with 3 courses per week is actually pretty annoying at this rate xD
But overall yes I agree it's long. Perhaps also because of the way sims 4 worlds work - you can't really not play your uni sims or they will fail and be put on probation. Guess that's the one major benefit of having uni in a totally separate world (even though I didn't much like it and barely any of my sims 3 have degrees for that very reason.)