@Aspersim there are mods to make University shorter, like
Dave Luv's Faster University Education mod here on MTS. And yeah, it definitely is a bummer that all townies are essentially Freshman--with no majors, too! If I do want to make a townie playable, I usually wait until their playable friend grows up and moves out of uni. If a sim with a degree moves in a sim, that townie is
supposed to come with a degree. You can also cheat them up to the appropriate year, using a mod like the College Adjuster, if you do want to play them at the same time as your playables.
Everyone has their own approaches to Uni, though. I used to find Uni long and boring too, but instead of making it shorter, I revised how I play and came up with a few challenges to make Uni harder. So, yes @Primavera, there I mods to make Uni harder! I love sharing my strategies, so I can tell you a bit about some of Ancient Highway's mods; there's actually several.
Harder Grades Class makes it so that going to class, doing assignments, and doing college research fill up the grade bar less; Harder Grades Term Required makes it so that sims have to complete their term paper every semester, or else their grade bar takes a hit and they have a chance to fail their final. Harder Grades Professor decreases the amount of grade performance sims get from socializing with professors and also adds the potential for sims to randomly fail. Dizzy also has a few mods that can help make Uni harder (Dizzy's archive is available in a few places, including
here thanks to ILikeFishFood). Less College Study and Less Homework Uni restrict when sims can autonomously do College Research and their homework and Random Go To Class makes going to class more random instead of automatic.
I do use Harder Grades Class and Term Required, but if you really do want to make uni harder, there are actually two simple things you can do without installing any mods at all: 1. Don't over-skill your teen sims and 2. Try playing Uni with a want-based approach. That's what I do, and I seriously think those two tiny changes really made a huge difference in playing Uni, and made things harder for my sims and more challenging for me. A few other simmers have mentioned playing with a want-based approach in the thread already, but, in case you or anyone else doesn't know, it just means that sims don't things unless they have a related want. So in my game, sims do not do coursework, other grade boosting activities, or skill, without rolling a want. Again, this simple change has a big impact. It means that sims who are already skilled and have a few points before heading to uni have a big advantage because if sims don't roll wants to skill or use items that will help them earn the skill points they need to unlock the grade bar, they can be in serious trouble.
I will sometimes direct my sims to stand
very, very close to a skilling item, but otherwise, that's it. If they don't take the bait and decide to sit down to earn that logic point, I can be spending the entire semester biting my nails, wondering if they'll roll a generic Gain A Skill point want so that they can unlock the bar a bit and pass the class. And because I use Harder Grades Class, my sims can't pass just by going to class anymore; they actually have to do at least a little work in order to get that C. If they're luckily, a dormie will convince them to join College Research, but even then, they can still fail if they don't do their term paper because of Term Required. It's been really interesting to see who really cares about doing well in school and who doesn't. Some sims almost never roll wants to improve their grades/skill. It's all hobbies and social interactions and parties with them. I was honestly surprised to find that Fortune Sims are right behind Knowledge sims when it comes to being serious about their studies. They're usually afraid of getting on probation, but also tend to roll wants to get on the Dean's List and do their term paper, at least once a semester--especially if it looks like they're going to fail. Like 99% of the time, Dustin didn't care about school, but, like clockwork, when the end of the semester came around and his grade bar was still low, that's when I saw the Write Term Paper and Do Assignment wants. Definitely reminded me of pulling all-nighters in college. On the other hand, Family sims and Popularity sims can be the worst about keeping up their grades. Some care, but a lot do not at all. Family sims are probably the absolute worst, imo; as far as their concerned, they can skip college and go straight to raising a family. Uni hardly seems to interest them at all. Luckily no one has flunked out in my game just yet, but there have been a few close calls.
Anyway, restricting item use is another good way to add challenge. Right now at least, almost all of my dorms have skill building items--usually ones that build fun and are at least a little attractive autonomously. You'll find chess tables, computers, exercise machines, and band equipment in my dorms. But some other simmers have rules about where sims can skill and when--like only on community lots, so sims have to go to their academic buildings and use facilities there in order to skill. So that can add a bit of challenge, too. If there's less opportunity to skill, there's less opportunity to get that grade bar open.
Which brings me back to point 1--Don't over-skill your teens. I used to overload my sims with scholarships, trying to get them to earn as many as they could. Don't do this. It just sucks the fun and challenge out of the game--not only for Uni, but also for the adult stage after uni. I remember when some of my legacy kids went to Uni, before I used any challenge mods. The spares maxed their LTA bar in college and the heir achieved his LTW after about a day on the job, after which he was promoted to Education Minister. Again, all of the challenge is gone when sims skill too early in life, and for what? Their lives become so boring in return. Once I realized that not every sim needs a skilling scholarship, I got to focus more on the sims when they were younger. Then I could take all that time in Uni and use some of it to focus on skills. When a sim doesn't have 4 skill scholarships, picking a major is a more interesting decision because it's not a guarantee that they'll have most of the skills they need to unlock grade bars. They might actually
need to spend some of their time in Uni working on a skill. But if they don't roll a want for it, then that becomes a challenge for me. Now I have to figure out what I can do to help my sim succeed. Is there a skill object that my sims might want to use autonomously? Are there other sims around and would my sim be persuaded to join them for an activity? Do they have enough time left in the end of the semester to complete a paper? Could they scrape by if they influenced a few dormies to do assignments while they run off to finals? Etc. You get so much more interesting scenarios when teens don't all have A pluses and a ton of scholarships.