I had the same experience, but it was not for a lack of motivation, it was just too much content to handle. We had 5-7 subjects with crazy amounts of exercises to hand in every week. I spend almost 20 hours a week on one subject in my first year. But there were still 4 other subjects to handle and we were expected to have a 40-hour week which of course was completely unrealistic. How are you supposed to read text books in addition to that?
There is this factor too. I had some 30 hours of classes in my first year of university. They had a suggested ratio of 1 hour of class time to 3 hours of outside time.
So 120 hours is what we were theoretically supposed to do?
It happened in my final year as well. Had a class where the prof openly said that we should be spending about 40 hours a week on his course as it had 10 contact hours.
Yes it was totally ridiculous, almost nobody managed the class schedule with a healthy amount of time/work involved. Most professors seemed to be so detached from reality that they either really thought it was possible or just thought their subject was more important than others and deserved more attention from the students.
Not to mention that during your university time you are SUPPOSED to do leisure activities, get to know other students; be active in clubs, join a sports team.
Adding to that basically anyone here in my country needs to have a job while studying because there are very little stipends and having student loans is not really a thing.
Either way, it was a disaster and only 20% of my class even finished their degrees in time, most had to extend by a semester or two.
