Joshua Palmatier

Sadly, this is what happens when education is starved of centralised funding and forced to depend on students and their parents for it. The tail wags the dog. The UK system is going this way, too: when I was still teaching we have one particular student who was not simply lazy and non-compliant, but actively unpleasant and bullying whom the institution would not let us fail. We let him back once, because the first year can be difficult for some students to adjust to and so on, but he was worse in his 2nd year. And we again were told to pass him. the only thing that saved us was that said student then managed to get himself in trouble with the police. Suddenly throwing him out was fine. I don't know what would have happened otherwise: nearly all of us had stated we would not accept him on our courses, but there had already been an instance of someone being ordered to teach a particular student (different case) despite their expressed desire not to. Universities don't see staff as people any more: we're furniture that provides resource for students. Your colleague has great integrity: best wishes to them in future.