How can I deal with a professor with an all-or-nothing grading habit? In the exams for the course I am taking, all questions are full credit or zero. Specifically, each exam has only 3 questions (approximately 30 points each). The professor only looks at the result. So, if you have a minus sign wrong in your final answer, you get 0 points. Further, any student who does not get 30/100 on the midterm is &quot;banned&quot; from taking the final exam and automatically fails the course (this is a policy the professor invented himself, and only he does it). Due to this, lots of people fail this course every year.
Normally in a year it is expected 100 students take this course (this is an obligatory course), but since many people fail, there are 200+ people taking this course every year (and this is the only course like this. Most of people fail it). And he is the only professor doing this. (I think it is some kind of a mobbing.)
And he seems so much closed to communication. He denies everything and always tells that &quot;you are not studying, this course is not that hard!&quot; But logically it cannot be true. Because there must be &quot;some people&quot; studying the course.
Last year nearly 200+ people took the class, but only 50 people could manage to pass it.
And most of the students &quot;failed&quot; the course because of his 30/100 threshold. They were banned to take the final exam.
So how could I deal with this problem?

Clarifications:

As I know he was dismissed to give lessons for a while due his behaviors before. Many people informed his behaviors to central authorities, but nothing changed. (As I know last year some students wrote mails to authorities to inform about the situation.)
Students do not have representatives that interface with the university administration. I do not know If it is brought to department council as a big group or not but everybody in the department is &quot;aware&quot; of this situation for years. And some other professors condemn him during their own lectures.
I am not blaming my professor. I just explained the situation I am into and asked for suggestions. Now as majority suggested, I will study more to this course. However in my country only top 5% of high school students are admitted to engineering degree. So at least in my country, a &quot;German system&quot; of classes with very high failure rates does not make sense.
This is not a subject area where mistakes could have lethal consequences
The rector of the university is &quot;friend&quot; of this professor. So he is some sort of &quot;untouchable&quot;. And people are scared to get stigmatized by him.
The professor is the department chair, so complaining to the department chair is not an option
This may be almost too obvious to be worth mentioning, but one idea you could consider is to study really really hard for this class in order to make sure you do not end up in the group of people who fail it, large though that group may be. It sounds like it’s not impossible to do well in the class, just more difficult than you are used to. A relevant idea to keep in mind is that you have control over the outcome: the belief that you can adapt your behavior to the situation and achieve a successful outcome is what is known as a growth mindset. It’s a powerful idea and very worth thinking about, both in the current context and for anything else you aim to do in the future.
That being said, it’s possible that the professor is unreasonably harsh in his grading methodology. Failing that many students by setting standards that are so high as to be nearly unattainable does not benefit either the students or the university (or future employers of those students), and results in a waste of resources and a drain on the students’ morale. Certainly preventing students from taking the final exam because of poor performance in the midterm is a rather extreme step, and contradicts much of what I know about best practices in education.
So, at the same time that you are working hard to succeed in the class, it’s completely reasonable to try to get the university to see that there is a problem and put pressure on the professor to change these policies. Some avenues that you can explore are to bring the matter up with the dean, the university ombuds person, your student union, or other types of student advocates that may be available. A local student or town newspaper or news website may also take an interest if this is an issue that affects a large number of students. If you are savvy with social media, you could drum up interest through Facebook or other social media, and attract support for your cause.
Good luck!
Edit: based on the discussion in the comments, many people seem to think my social media idea is a really bad one. I don’t completely understand their objection (the main reasoning given is the idea that social media are a “cesspit”, so it may simply reflect a dislike of social media in general and a belief that you shouldn’t use it for any purpose), but it’s possible they have a point, so keep that in mind. In any case, my suggestion is not meant to be understood as an endorsement of social media in general, only as a suggestion that social media may be useful as an advocacy/campaigning tool in a specific situation like yours.