Over 50% of my calculus students failed last semester. The students that failed my class were premed or engineering majors. If a student can’t pass calculus then he/she will not make it through basic engineering courses like thermodynamics or strength of materials. A student that doesn’t have the work ethic needed to pass my class will not make it through a tough course like gross human anatomy.
Amen.
When I went through engineering in college, we started out with a very large contingent of students Freshman year. By Senior year, the engineering class was 1/5th in size.
Calculus was "easy" to me compared to other engineering classes such as Statics, Dynamics, Thermodynamics, Vibrations, Materials, Circuits, and Fluid Mechanics.
With Calculus or Differential Equations, you could learn the foundational building blocks and rules, and then practice problem after problem to master the concepts.
With engineering, you could practice until you were blue in the face. Then, on the midterm and final exams, the professors would throw their "curve balls" into the tests, asking you to "think like an engineer" on concepts and strange angles into problems you had to solve (in a very short time and under pressure). In short, what you studied was almost never on the exam in pure form.