This is a topic I've thought a lot about ... here's a strawperson proposal that might incite some discussion, though it's by no means a panacea: http://pgbovine.net/undergrad-course-limits.htm
i think one solution ironically might be to have much less holidays.. right now in the uk the top universities (cambridge and oxford) have two 8 week terms of learning a year, which means all the extra-curricular, social life and academics are crammed in these very compressed periods of time... compare this to tsinghua university (in china) where terms are 17 weeks long and weirdly that means everything is more chilled out because things are more spread out.
First time I've seen it put like that but Google seems to indicate this is a common synonym for "strawman" in this sense.
Is there actually a separate usage between "strawman" and "strawperson" or is it just political correctness? I'm genuinely interested.