@STEINER, I agree that some courses have a lot of contact time,ie; medicine, vetinary,engineering etc.
However Arts,Social Science,Business and law have approx 6 to 14 hours contact time.
Some of those courses last four years...
I know from personal experience that some students only do these hours plus they are off from early May until late Setember.
My point is these courses could easily be reduced by a year,that way savings for both the student and the state would be made.
That is why I wrote in my OP "some "courses.
On a related point, we also need to stop this fascination with third level education and the idea that everyone has to go to college. There are many courses offered by the various third level colleges that are simply there to attract numbers and offer very little.