In higher education one of the most important learning goals is deep understanding. Achieving this goal needs time and effort. The authors discuss their observations of student time use on the basis of several case studies which they have conducted in the field of engineering education in Finland. The time that the students spend studying is clearly less than has been stipulated in curricula. Also other time-use studies reveal controversy between the curriculum and actual studying. The authors raise questions dealing with reasons for this problem such as is the workload too high or are the courses too easy. The observations and discussion will hopefully motivate courses to be dimensioned more realistically when taking the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) in use. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)