Is my boyfriend a workaholic? He doesn’t see me much due to university

I’m not at all accusing him of choosing school over me or anything like that. He warned me about this before he went into school. I know university is hard but is it THAT hard? Is it necessary for him to be putting this many hours into it?

Back story my bf and I started dating a little before the summer. We’re both serious about our relationship and plan to get married one day and have a family. The summer was really good. Our relationship began to really take off. But he started school to be a software engineer in September. He warned me it was gonna be a lot of time. Which I was fine with cause I can handle it. But talking about marriage he said he prefers to be married by around age 30. (We’re both 25) it seemed like a bit of a rush at first but I put thought into it and our summer together was so good and marriage won’t be til another 5 or so years so I’ll have lots of time to just enjoy being boyfriend and girlfriend.

Then uni started in September. We’d have two days a week when we see each other. Because he’d spend all day every day studying. We’d still text and he tells me about what he’s studying and learning which is cool. But ofc I started to miss him but I get it he’s busy. Then we started seeing each other once a week. And once in a while when he has a lot to do he’ll cancel that day and we plan to see each other the same day next week.

Today is his birthday. It would be our first time celebrating his birthday as a couple. We had planned to go get dinner. But last night he told me he’ll be busy today since he has a test on Monday (today was Wednesday) so I didn’t really understand why he can’t take just one hour out of the day for his birthday. But he said we’ll reschedule it for Sunday (the one day we normally see each other). I was kinda excited about seeing him today though but it seemed school was more important than his birthday and that’s okay I know everyone’s different.

Yes I talked to him about it. Because I know people are gonna tell me that. First I said sorry I didn’t get to see you on your birthday I miss you blah blah blah so he has an idea of how I feel and he basically said it’s okay cause he’s been pretty content with what he’s working on. Then I said I wanna make sure he has a healthy balance of work/non work and asked if he’s eating and sleeping enough. I said It’s great that your working hard but i wanna make sure it’s in a healthy way. And he basically explained university is generally unhealthy but hard work pays off.

But I wanna make sure he means that and it’s not just gonna continue. Like in the future is he gonna have a software engineering job that he chooses over his family?

He lives with his dad and even his dad is starting to comment on it “you’ve really been staring at that computer all day??/ do you guys even see each other?/ how do you spend so much time doing the same thing??” And I met his friend group once since we started dating. All of them were making jokes about how they never see him anymore cause uni took him away.

If I’m gonna marry this guy I’d kinda wanna get to know him a little the next 4 years you know?

Yes I plan on talking about it in person sometime soon bc I communicate better in person.

But I just wanna know. Is he working too much or is it completely necessary? I’ve never went to uni so I have no idea!

I’m not denying that it’s hard and takes a lot of work. But is software engineering that hard that you have to be studying pretty much 24/7?? Or is he a workaholic ?