Comment by imgabe

The dean is like a middle manager. They are not the university leadership. The actual leadership is the president and board of trustees and the legions of administrators who create and enforce policies. They are not faculty or if they once were like the president and some other upper level positions, they left that path a long time ago.

They care about things like the US News and World Report rankings, and if students are failing classes and it starts hurting their graduation rate and hurting their ranking, they put a stop to it.