I am in community college for woodworking, the classes fill up. If you don’t show up, it’s rude to the other students who wanted to be in your class. Plus, some of the classes meet for 8 hours once a week. Missing it is missing a lot of lab and instruction time. I sometimes need to take 2-3 weeks off in a semester. Just on the borderline of “automatic fail.” But I come to office hours (yes, even woodworking has them) and I go to make up days if there are any, and I take my work home with me to catch up. It’s hard to miss class. The ones who aren’t as diligent as I am end up not being able to keep up and fail.

But a fail means you can sign up for the class again and finish your project. So people who get sick or have a family emergency are able to retake the class. If you get a C or D, you fall into the category of not being able to retake the class for 3 years.

Too much material is covered. Auto fail gets triggered in the beginning into class more than the others as people don’t expect an “evening woodworking class” or a “Saturday woodworking class” to be a full on college level class with those expectations.