Thought experiment: You are in the doctor's office with a non-descript abdominal pain. Do you want the person determining the seriousness of your illness/pain to be someone who had to be remediated more than once to freeking PASS medical school?????
If we want to be direct access providers of health care the standards need to be rigorous. Weed out those who can't handle it. I may sound harsh but its how I feel. Some people simply aren't made to be problem solvers and be able to identify the patterns that are within our scope and keep our patients safe. Those people should do something else.
Rant over.
I'm glad somebody said it.
I think if there is a personal situation (death of a spouse, major health crisis, etc) that prevented an otherwise capable student from getting through their studies they should obviously be allowed to take a leave of absence and then return to complete the program. But if the issue is strictly academic in nature and you are struggling to barely pass PT school, maybe you should think about what you're doing.
The way that students are selected for PT school is not a perfect system and, unfortunately, once in a while a student will be admitted that just isn't cut out for it.
Now if the faculty really are being downright antagonistic towards students as the OP has hinted at, that is a different story. But I tend to think those instances are few and far between, and when you do hear and see them get talked about you have to keep in mind that nobody is ever giving you the full story.
And let's keep in mind the OP is talking about a school with an 85% graduation rate, and that's what the real concern is. That either means that this school is terrible at selecting good students, or their faculty and curriculum really do have some serious problems, or some combination of both.