[fluidcruft]

Professors are often advised to pretend the syllabus is a contract because doing so sets expectations and can avoid annoying petty hassles at the end of the term when students that feel slighted and desperate start abusing administrative procedures (i.e. it reduces perfunctory pointless busy work that will waste the professor's time because admin will always find a way to fall for egregious student bullshit).

Generally, professors should try to find a balance that sets the syllabus to be difficult but still doable--difficult enough that students don't blow off the work, but also not so difficult as to frighten them away and cause them to drop in the first few weeks. Plus you can always move the grading scale down later which makes the students quite happy later in the term. Failing someone because they didn't muster up to this sort of syllabus is more "difficult" for the administration to roll over.

"Difficult" in the sense that admin will maybe, possibly sense a vague pang of internal conflict and disease (assuming they still have any sense of agency whatsoever) while rubberstamping the override.