[burnished]

I think this is a valid line of questioning but personally I'm not sure everyone should "have the right to fail the course from start to finish" on the basis that it can be a severe drain on resources and perhaps even unfair to the person falling behind. If the work is highly collaborative then the person who fell behind becomes a burden for their peers. If that is not a concern you will still get people that either squeak through without flourishing (reducing the overall quality of your graduates), or people that realistically did not have a chance from the outset that then get denied at the finish line.

For the purpose of trying to determine what is or is not fair I don't think it matters whose fault this is (a failure of the school's pedagogy or of the student's ability to keep up) because I think allowing the failure state to continue is fundamentally unfair.