Once they leave university the effect stops but any added weight is kept. Sims will gain about 20 points of weight a week, so four semesters is enough to get a sim from 0 to 80.
The effect moves pretty slowly by default (just over half the speed of Expanding Waistline), but it is in addition to any other mods/weight gain efforts by your sims during their time in school, and it affects all students on campus (NPCs too).
Just finished a new mod for the Sims 4, and I’m pretty excited about it! Building on the amazing work has done, I have created a mod that causes all college students to slowly gain weight for as long as they are enrolled at a Sim university, giving them an invisible buff that functions similarly to the Expanding Waistline mod by TSF.