Yes, currently the exams are regarded as merely a hurdle to be gotten over. With the JAA exams, there was maybe a 10% excuse for this as 20% of the Learning Objectives and the questions were simply either unnecessary or wrong, respectively.
But the other side of the coin is that many people are simply expecting their licences to come out of a cornflakes packet, i.e. with the least possible amount of work, possibly due to the unrealistic expectations generated by the modern education system.
The easiest way of reducing the work required to study is simply to be interested in it, and if you are not, then aviation is not the career for you. If you regard the exams as just a hurdle, then they will be exactly that.
With regard to the in-depth learning approach - of course it will take more time. Many of you will be getting other licences around the world at some stage - the best advice I can give is to learn as much as you can in the early stages then you are in and out of the future exam rooms as quickly as possible and not learning yet another set of dodgy questions every time.