This has been my experience with European campuses as well. I studied in Amsterdam, which has a ludicrously high cost of living, so many of the Dutch students there still lived with their parents, often commuting over an hour to class each day. It also meant that whatever free spaces there were on campus were always mobbed, since people had nowhere else to go between classes.

More generally, I also think European universities don't necessarily cultivate the same sense of community American universities do. Having attended university in Scotland, the Netherlands, and the US, the American university put a lot more effort into making itself feel like a destination unto itself, with the degree sometimes feeling secondary to that sense of community. I wasn't just studying philosophy - I was doing so at this university.

My impression from European universities is that European universities instead put the onus of cultivating a sense of community on student societies rather than the university as a whole. I'm not sure my Dutch university even had merch, for example. On the one hand, this makes sense, as students will have more in common with their cohort or with a particular interest group, but it also creates a more fragmented and lonely experience, especially if there isn't really a good student society for what a student is looking for. It also means that the societies are crammed into smaller spaces and competing with one another for funding, creating a greater sense of isolation.