[andreilys]

Colleges rarely if ever fail students. There’s a known phenomenon of grade curving (adding +x% to exams if it was difficult for some students) which I never understood during my time in higher education.

Yet it makes sense because universities want to lessen liabilities and have rich alum give back (esp. the case with the children of wealthy donors).

[babesh]

I went to Berkeley and this wasn’t true for Berkeley. Popular majors were very competitive and were designed to filter students out of majors. Many classes were based on a curve such that effectively 1/3 of people ended up at least leaving the major. Sample popular majors: computer science, chemical engineering, molecular cell biology. I knew of at least one person who effectively failed out after one semester and of community college transfers in danger of failing out.

[kenhwang]

Same experience at my UC. Popular/impacted major courses aren't even allowed to curve up (only down). The universities will defend the reputation of their top majors by aggressively filtering out people not meeting the bar. It's not unheard of for a majority of a class to be given non-passing marks, and it's in their financial interest to do so since the student will have to retake the class, thus pay more in tuition. They'd just rather you waste your time and money in an non-impacted major (and so it doesn't impact their graduation rate stat used for major rankings).

Definitely have my share of friends that did 6-8 year stints at the UC for a 4-year degree from constantly failing out of classes, but never forced out.