We have this discussion basically every new semester, honestly it's tiring. On the one hand we _are_ removing more and more content from our courses, not because we want ease the load on the first year students, but because we have to catch a increasingly large portion of students up to speed on topics that should have been covered in school.
Related: one of the faculties here recently announced the introduction of a threshold grade. If you were bad at school, you are not taken into consideration, even if there are available places.