I’m not sure that college students - or, to call them by their age group, teenagers - are really appropriately assumed to be “adults” at all times. Obviously we don’t think that when it comes to alcohol and partying - universities step in and make heavy-handed decisions we’d never apply to full adults all the time (example, shutting down a house & evicting residents for having a party where an assault happened). So why not apply that same “not yet fully mature adults” logic when it comes to something with massive social benefits, which society has in interest in promoting: more mathematically literate university graduates?

This is precisely what first year students are not.