My school actually has standards. None of this rewriting the exam crap if you didn't get 50%. We need 50% to get the credit, and need to maintain a 60% average. If you get a 49, you failed, don't get the credit, don't get to retake the exam (should have studied!), and you have to do the course again. Additionally, you also get a "course failed" on your report and the maximum we're allowed to fail is 2 before they kick us out.
None of this pity crap.
If you think about it, it actually makes sense for a university to do it the way I described. If you allow a student to retake a course over and over and over until he succeeds, he has to pay the money for that course every single time, so you're essentially getting a lot more money from him than you normally would. Even simply taking the exam again means you have to shell out money, and if you fail the exam again, then you have to take the course over again, which is even more money out of his pocket.
Plus, on the student's side, for students who honestly did know the material and who did well in the rest of the course, and who were perhaps just having a really bad day on the day of the exam or something (you have to pass the exam to pass the course, even if you got 100% in the course), it really doesn't seem that fair to make the student take the entire course again when the only stumbling block was the final exam.
While I agree with you that we shouldn't excessively pamper students who aren't doing so hot, I can't say I agree with your idea that schools and universities should be some sort of military setting where you're harshly punished and even taken close to being fully ejected the moment you step out of line. Some people are simply slackers who want the world handed to them, yes, but some people honestly
do just have a hard time, and I really don't think we should be treating both groups in exactly the same harsh manner.
