Physicist's perspective. Logically an undergraduate degree is 3 years: the first year is catch up and baseline, everyone gets to the same standard. The second y

Physicist's perspective. Logically an undergraduate degree is 3 years: the first year is catch up and baseline, everyone gets to the same standard. The second year is actually learning the bulk of the core material. The third year is specialisation and a dissertation project. This also allows for people to fail and resit years as major milestones. Many technical courses overlap. Mathematicians in particular are generally allowed to do anything. I think in the US it's even greater with the minor/major system, so courses like calculus/linear algebra are enormous because everyone from engineering to chemistry might sit in. The majority of undergraduate degrees in the UK are 3 years, 4 if you do a Masters on top. You could probably do the material faster; probably 2 years? But... Physics had one of the highest course loads of all the degrees, 25 hours a week in second year. That's just lecture time, you're expected to do that time again outside. We had almost no free time in the first year due to the amount of compulsory coursework (the crap stuff which requires an expensive 99th edition textbook with a code in it). In later years there was less compulsory homework so less pressure, but then you struggle if you skip it. Exams.. well they had to schedule four years' worth of exams with fairly little overlap, plus time in the summer term for extra modules that wouldn't fit in the second semester. So that takes a couple of months. I guess if you had the capacity you could also optimise that into a big two week block for all students, but that would be challenging. We had 10 week terms/semesters (Oxbridge have 8 officially, but really it's 10) and the rest is effectively vacation. In my day (hah), internships weren't really a big thing. I did a research placement at my university and a few people got industry jobs, but not many. Most of us just enjoyed a month of vacation over Christmas, we revised over Easter and we took the summer off. It wasn't like CS today when people try and get a different FAANG job every summer. The dissertation was budgeted at I think 2 days a week for two semsesters (though you were expected to work more than that). If you cut down holidays then, you could probably squeeze the program into 2 years. That would be an unpleasant experience. I believe in some countries like Austria, you can get a degree by sitting the requisite courses on your own schedule.