That’s interesting about the University of Delaware, and I think it’s a new development.
Some years ago (quite a few, actually), my son, who completed Spanish 3 in ninth grade and never took a foreign language again, applied to the University of Delaware and was admitted with a merit scholarship. (He chose to attend a different college, though.)
He would never have applied under the current system because he wouldn’t have been eligible to apply.
At my son’s high school, which did discontinue German, they did absolutely nothing to accommodate the students. I think they were counting on the general principle that college admissions officers won’t penalize kids who get screwed by the system. There were definitely kids who had completed German 1 and 2 and could not go on to German 3.