I don't know much about it, if people are really losing interest or is it because of other things.
I can't hide that I have a little more preference for Max's story because of the characters, but I also disagree with seeing Max in college. The problem I always see is how DS handles his plans, he seems to like to run over what has already been built which in this case was Kate's history with college and in that he creates a kind of snowball that is growing every moment he forces the content on him. If Max entered college as a normal character, just like the other npcs, it would be more viable to have one more male npc in the game to interact with, just as it was also possible to add the other one (the old Julia's brother). But he preferred to do it in an unplanned way, as he tried to explore other possible avenues and at the same time force players to give up one side, imo of course.
As for Kate, I'm not so sure and I don't have much hope that one day he'll realize he made a mistake of removing all the spotlight from her and giving it to Max, DS knows that college is what sustains Kate's story, he knows that there can be no room for another protagonist, he made an amateur writer's mistake, it seems he did it on purpose as I always said so his subscribers and audience could forget about her path. That's why he forces, he inserted a new character that I just now discovered the name, Elena, precisely for her to please Max's fans, being that there are other ways that could work better if he were in the Villa or even explore other places, like stripclub, nightclub, etc; as well as could have explored a little more other characters like Ann, Lisa, Sara and Kira and could even use some characters from Kate's story. But he decided to run over everything, to go over a story that he knew had strength and that his subscribers supported him precisely for Kate.