We admit that many of our students are underprepared, overly dependent, and unmotivated. A student success focus is designed to deal with these failings and enable students to graduate, presumably by somehow making them more prepared, less dependent and more motivated. Student services are ramped up, early alert systems enabled to provide counseling for those failing their classes. Even professional development for everyone from janitors to administrators is designed to promote student success.
However, the system as it exists is not set up to provide the type of personal attention that student success advocates say is needed. College is designed for the prepared, independent, motivated student that's what makes it higher education. Grades are assigned to those students to determine the level of their work compared to a discipline standard, and assessment assumes that the work they do is the result of their learning. At the undergraduate level, college is designed for general rather than deep learning, in a process that forces the student to do lots of reading and pay attention.
I commit heresy now when I say that this traditional design might be a good thing.