How many engineering students in programs without first-year programs don’t get a degree in the major they desired as a freshman? I bet it’s higher than 1 in 6. What’s the difference between people not meeting the first-year requirements for their desired major and people simply falling behind the “normal” way? At least with first-year programs, there are more fallback options, typically including either other similar engineering majors or going a non-engineering route earlier before too much money is sunk into the engineering curriculum.
I guess my feeling is that, for a given student, if failure is probably, I see no reason that the traditional route to failure should be better than the “first-year” route to failure. If someone has data showing that first-year programs cause more people to fail than the traditional route, I’d be happy to change my tune here, but, at least on the surface, it seems to be the opposite.