Question: The issue has crept up on me slowly over the last several years. I am increasingly aware of the massive debt that many of my students are taking on, debt which is far beyond the sort of debt that I incurred as an undergraduate in the 1980s. Because of this, in recent semesters I have found it somewhat difficult to fail students. Instead of simply asking myself "does this student deserve to fail this class?", I find myself asking "does this student deserve to have their life ruined?" In many cases (e.g. students who are already on academic probation) this is not much of an exaggeration. It is a very bad situation to find yourself in your early 20s with no college degree but $30,000 in debt. In some cases, I am aware that a decision of mine might be a contributing cause of a student ending up in just such a situation. I can no longer regard a failing grade as a relatively minor matter (like a speeding ticket).

How do professors reconcile their de jure role as guardians of academic integrity with their de facto role of being (at least in part) responsible for their students' economic future?

Answer: 
Some of the discussion surrounding this question demonstrates that people are viewing it through two different implicit lenses, and I'd like to make them explicit.

* **Considered as an act in isolation** A single decision to give a student a "kindly" mark has quite diffuse negative consequences. As long as we assume that the rest of the student's record is accurate, the harm to students who have legitimately passed the course, to the institution awarding the credential, and to the organizations that will later trust that credential as a mark of suitability are all very modest. Down in the weeds, really.
* **Considered as a pattern** If we assume that "give the poor kid a break" is a social norm that could be applied over and over again to a single student, then the picture is different. Some subset of students will be awarded credentials that don't mean what they say on the label, their subsequent failure in work environments will drag down the reputation of the institution and with it the value of degrees *earned* by students who didn't get a bunch of soft passes. And the damage starts even earlier than that, because professors in second year and later courses will have classes coming in less prepared than they should be and will have to give time over to remedial explanations and hand-holding to the detriment of progress in their course.

Several times during my career I've agonized over the kind of decision facing John, and I'm hugely sympathetic. I feel for students who have gotten themselves into a financial bind they don't have the where-with-all to haul themselves out of. But by the time a student is standing in my office explaining that if they don't pass my class they won't graduate and, and, and ... they have already have years of warning signs. That can't be on one professors' head. 

More than once I discretely (no names) sounded out some of my colleagues about a student only to come away reasonably convinced that the subject had already been given a break; probably more than once.

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As an aside I'm convinced that a significant amount of blame for the binds the students get into in the US lies with a financing system that "just grew that way" through a serious of short-sighted and frankly stupid decisions made by politicians who were personally isolated from the consequences. Both major parties have been vastly wrongheaded in their own ways, but the damage is worse because of they ways they have compromised; the old joke about bipartisanship leading to stupid-evil legislation applies.
Going to college in a country with high tuition fees is a risk. A potentially very huge risk.

I think it is important to establish a scheme that makes sure that weak students notice this immediately. This means that in the very first year, it should become clear to the students whether they will make it or not.