You posted this elsewhere in the thread, where I replied that this is not normal in the U.S. Can I ask what university and degree program it is where students have 40 hours of class and lab time per week?
They mentioned engineering programs in their comment.
40 hours isn't normal even for engineering programs. Every engineering program I've looked at has higher course hour and credits required. Obviously I haven't looked at every single engineering program at every engineering school, so there probably exists some counter example showing it's no different than arts or science..
Where I studied, we had one semester with 40.5 hours of lecture, lab, and tutorials. One other semester was around 38 or 39 hours. The rest were in the mid-twenties for lecture, lab, tutorial. My program wasn't the typical engineering program, but all of the other engineering schools where I went (Western Canada) did require more credits and more class hours than science and arts and business programs. There may have been some exceptions with honors programs (meaning they have to take 132 credits vs 120 credits and write a thesis) in arts and science that put them closer to engineering programs, but these have limited enrollment.
