I play on long life, so I actually find it a little on the short side. That said, what you may want to try if you don't want to use a mod is to switch to long life (or aging off as apparently it was in previous games) while your sim is at University.
If you switch to long life while at uni, and then back to normal when they graduate, the amount of aging from while at Uni is proportional. (It's early, don't ask me to do the math on specifics.) Of course, this won't work as well if you have multiple sims/sim families going to Uni in overlapping but staggered times.