Should considerations be made if half of a project group drops the course? I am a student who is completing a course where the major assessment is a Project where you work in a team of four to complete it in different deadlines (Draft and Final).

However we have been informed that two of our group members have dropped the course and no considerations will be made. We are expected to work as a team of two when everyone else has a team of four (with some that I know of experience one person drop outs).

Would it not be ethical to make some sort of consideration? Maybe splitting my two person group and placing us in other groups that have had one member drop out?

The Lecturers reasoning is that "If someone is sick on your team you are still expected to make deadlines". However I know that if I had a deadline for a project and half of my team was off the entire time with some sickness then some sort of consideration would be made.

Is this ethical or am I looking at this wrong?

Thanks.

EDIT: The students are NOT COMING BACK

EDIT:
I just got back talking to him. He does not plan to change anything, stating that some people only have one person in their group now.

I said I would be happy to take them into our team but he said that was not an option. I emailed my unit coordinator as I believe this is unfair but I doubt anything will come of it.

At this stage we are just pushing on ahead but I am keeping my emails in case we fail and need to apply for a review.
I've seen this happen before. What ended up happening was that Mr. Doe ended up being allowed to do an individual assignment on par with the level of effort as a member the group assignment.

Losing members does not change deadlines. The same result is expected, i.e. a paper is due on a deadline. That shouldn't change, even though your group has changed. Half a group doesn't mean you can get twice as long to work on it, mostly because deadlines rarely move as a result of group changes, and practically because the schedule won't account for it.

What has changed is the amount of work you can realistically accomplish. Instead of having four person-units to work with, you have two person-units to work with. You will not be able to make the same effort as four people, but I highly doubt the professor will expect you to be able to meet that level of effort, simply because asking a human to fill in as two humans rarely ever works in the real world, at least not for long before that human breaks down.

Do not expect to change your deadline. Expect to change how much work you will complete by that deadline. Talk with your professor about how much effort the two of you will need to apply to meet his expectations, as opposed to whether or not you will meet his deadlines. Does he expect you to perform as much work as four students will do, or just meet the same timeline?

If he also wants you to do twice as much work as other students, then I'd have issue, but if he only wants you to meet deadlines, and will take into account that you're short 50% of a normal group, then I wouldn't find any real merit to saying the deadline is unreasonable.