Why do so many people fail in the first semester?

There are several factors:

• Studying is an assault for many new students. Many do not manage to suddenly have no more duties and get nothing more, but to learn completely independently. Especially when they don’t have an intrinsic motivation for their study subject, they just started some study (because you have to study).
• In some disciplines, it is common to admit quite many students first and then to motivate them in the first two semesters by deliberately hard exams to rethink their choice. Partly, the lecturer is properly acquitted, which should make his first semester module particularly difficult. Instead of an official selection procedure for access to study.
• Benotation is a different one than in school. A 4.0 is basically a success, because it says that one has understood the thing so far that one can build on it.