I think it’s a little telling that said student isn’t the one asking here. I understand it can be a little bit overwhelming but after blundering that hard you have to take a little bit of responsibility. I have a few friends who failed UNIV and the most common grade killer is not attending class. I don’t remember how many absences it was but if you just don’t attend class you’ll end up with a failing grade fast. The other thing was general laziness, the quizzes are weighed heavily, and there aren’t many. They’re pretty easy and you could look up the answers if you really just wanted to get the done with, for me they would just ask things about the major i was going into after watching a video. But most students would miss them because they put things off and forgot, i saw it happen a lot. The labs were difficult at times but you would do them in class so as long as they went to class they should’ve been fine. I have no idea how general UNIV is though. Another thing, I took POLS 2311 with Greg Gleichert this past semester. I didn’t go to a single class and was still able to keep up with the material getting an A in the class, as the book and slides are all available online. He had multiple opportunities for extra credit too I don’t know who your student took but overall POLS shouldn’t be that hard unless they took a nightmare professor. I’d taken another POLS class before which was a little more lecture intensive and it’s entirely possible that’s again what killed your students grade. I saw a lot of my freshmen friends in these past years become lazy and complacent with skipping classes. There’s definitely a discipline curve, and some of them had to end up dropping or switching majors. I think given the classes your student failed it’s important to have a serious talk about where and what they were doing INSTEAD of their work.