My university’s interpretation of FERPA prohibits posting grades by student number (obviously, posting by name is also out). However, posting by student number was done at the university I attended a long time ago.
Most of the engineering majors at my university require a relatively high GPA (often above 3.0) for admission to the major at the end of the sophomore year, with specific requirements for the courses that must have been completed. The rationale for this is that the number of engineering faculty members is limited, and for accreditation purposes, the faculty:student ratio has to be kept at or above a certain level. Then, there is more demand for the major than there is room in it. I don’t think we are the only university like this.
The intro science and math courses are not designed as “weed out” courses, though. They cover the topics that students need to understand, in order to build on them for subsequent courses, in order to reach the level expected of a science/math student with an undergraduate degree in the field, by the time of graduation. If the number of students who actually fail a course goes much above 5%, the Dean becomes pretty agitated, though.
One of my colleagues asks other faculty fairly often, “Do you see yourself as a weeder, or as a gardener?”