Pass/fail means that whatever was a C before is going to be passing now. It lowers expectations compared to the previous grading scheme (in that a C no longer has a serious impact on your GPA, you still pass). If the majority of the students are getting a C or better, the majority of students would get a passing mark.

They really ought to do a follow up for 2026. From what I gather talking to faculty and professors, this problem became noticeably worse since COVID and the years following. A follow up book or study would be very interesting to read.

The consequence though, was that every single person who stayed on the course actually cared about being there. Staying motivated for the next three and a half years was made so much easier because the first six months were so difficult.

I remember two things about my university.

First, I was a 'provisional' admission. Which meant that I had to maintain at least a C Average for the first year, Had to log a certain number of hours in one of the 'study centers' every week (Although I could technically do whatever, so I wound up reading a lot of books once I had my coursework done,) and there was a 1 hour a week pass/fail that was primarily following up on the study center logs and connecting students with extra help if the needed it.

Second, I remember a -lot- of people pledging a fraternity their first semester, and statistically it seemed to cause a much higher fail rate... In fact, I tried pledging a social fraternity my second year, dropped out in less than a week because I realized the time commitments and requirements would have tanked my grades; sure enough out of the entire group that didn't drop out, less than 10% survived through the full year.

That second point actually got so bad that, for my last year they actually banned Social fraternities from recruiting first semester freshmen... not sure whether it stuck or not after I graduated tho.

This is about gunning for the elite/upper echelons of society. Doing that requires working like a dog not just for 2 years of high school and 4 years of college, but for likely several decades after.

It's totally fine if not everyone can do it and that more people try than actually achieve it. It would be surprising if those weren't true, and engineering the system otherwise is just degrading what it means to achieve the result.