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Why are low pass rates (below 50%) for exams considered acceptable in Germany?
The Law Stack Exchange question “Can you take action against a miserable pass-rate of an exam?” is about an exam at a German university where:

The first exam had a failure-rate of 58% (265 paticipants), after the bound to pass was lowered. The second exam had a failure-rate of 93% (111 paticipants). [The German commentors assume that students only needed to pass one exam (either one), not both.]

The author of the question states that such low pass rates are obviously unacceptable; several comments say the opposite. One such comment by Wrzlprmft invites interested users to ask for more details on this site:

As already noted, the failure rates you describe are pretty normal and generally accepted in at least some fields in Germany (including at least maths and physics). I have myself organised an exam with similar rates and I will happily explain to you why. However, since this would exceed the space and purpose of a comment, …, I invite you to ask about this on Academia.

Why should low pass rates not be acceptable?

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Analogous question: Why are high pass rates for courses considered acceptable in the US?

My background
I studied physics and maths in Germany where such failure rates (50% in the first exam, 90% in the make-up exam) were common. I also organised one first-semester physics course with similar failure rates in the exams. Finally, I attended many exam corrections as a tutor. I will limit my self to these subjects, though I am quite confident that my answer also holds for others.
Relevant aspects of the German academic system

German students pick a field of study when entering university.
Studying is essentially free in Germany.
As a result, universities do not treat students as customers.
In many fields, including maths and physics, there is no admission cut-off by high-school grades (“Numerus Clausus”) or only a very lenient one.
There is a considerable number of “eternal” students who unsuccessfully study a subject for many years before eventually dropping out.

As a result, everybody who completed high school (Abitur) can enrol in such programmes.
Also see this answer of mine.
Why do many students fail?
The drop-out rates for students of maths and physics are rather high in Germany. There are several reasons for this and not all are good, but in my experience, the following are predominant:

At a university level, these subjects are quite different from their school counterparts. The level of abstraction and speed is higher. Many students encounter proofs for the first time at university.

Students are required to work much more independently at university. If they decide not to do anything at all, nobody will reprimand them quickly.

Exams (and exercises) focus much more on understanding and being able to apply things than memorisation and blindly applying methods.

In my estimate, roughly half the students who begin studying physics or math are just not in the right field of study and have no chance of completing the programme, no matter how well the courses and exams are designed. (A considerable portion of these realises this very early and never writes a single exam.) On top, there are many students who need a few semesters to get the hang of studying.
Why it is accepted that many students fail?
Due to the above reasons, there are no good predictors of whether somebody succeeds studying. For example, some students who excel at school maths are completely unsuited for studying mathematics and cannot know before they actually study it. Conversely, entrance restrictions for these fields would keep away some excellent students who have struggled with the school system (I know some of these).
Therefore, the best way to tell whether somebody is really suited to study maths or physics is to let them do it.
As a result you get many students who fail exams, in particular in the first semesters.
Why not let more students pass?
The general idea is that students who fail an exam missed the rudimentary goals of the course and will only have more trouble with advanced courses (which are considered to be even harder). Therefore it will be best for them to repeat the course or drop out. Yes, the course might have been didactically bad or similar, but even then, there is no benefit to let students pass to make up for that. In particular, you do not want that students graduate who have not learnt what they should, as it devalues the degree and causes all the problems people doing jobs they are not qualified for.
I witnessed and participated in some discussions around setting fail–pass thresholds for exams with different people. The main focus was always whether all people who would pass the exam had met the minimal goals of the course, not on whether the right amount of people passed or similar.
In “my” exam, the vast majority of students who failed made a series of fundamental mistakes that indicated a severe lack of understanding. For example, many used energy conservation to solve a problem with explicit and unknown friction. Mind that this was a fully open-book exam, so skills like memorising played hardly any role. I acknowledge that some people were suffering from examination anxiety and were failing due to other issues, but I am quite confident that most people who failed the exam had no chance of ever obtaining a physics degree (at least one that wasn’t completely worthless). Also, a considerable portion of students failing this first-semester course had already been studying for years.
In physics, another aspect is that often only students who passed their first exam may enter the lab courses, which require more resources per student, in particular students who put in no effort whatsoever and may break things as a result. By contrast, another student in a lecture with exercises costs almost nothing.
What about the second exam?
If both exams are equally difficult, a 90% failure rate in the second exam indicates that the exams are fair and have a reasonable difficulty. If exam success completely depends on luck, you would expect the failure rates to be the same for both exams.
By contrast, if most students who bring in the requirements for the course and put in the effort pass the first exam, mostly “bad” students remain for the second exam and those are more likely to fail. Of course, you also have students who were sick for the first exam, had a bad day, or really made an effort between the exams and those make up the 10% that pass the second exam.
I also witnessed some cases where both exams were badly designed and focussed on different skills and topics than the exercises or common sense would let you expect. Here the pass rates in the second exams was much higher because then everybody was prepared for what the exam designer was throwing at them.
Reverse example: medicine
In Germany, access to medicine programmes is highly restricted. You essentially need to finish high school (Abitur) with the best possible grade or wait very long or meet pre-conditions such as having worked as a nurse, etc. Also, the contents of the field are less abstract, etc. People tend to joke that the entrance criteria for medicine capture exactly the skills required for studying medicine, namely blind memorising and similar (and unfortunately these skills are less relevant for practising medicine). As a result, drop-out rates for medicine programmes are much lower and the mentioned failure rates may cause a ruckus.

Medical doctors have to be nurses first in Germany?

@AzorAhai: No, they don’t, but being a nurse helps to get into studying medicine. Also see my edit.

@AzorAhai-him- Not quite the same, but (almost?) all successful med school applicants in the US will have some clinical experience, usually through shadowing or some sort of volunteer/internship program.

@BryanKrause I know that, but nurse -> MD is not a very common career path.

@BryanKrause Perhaps it is a translation issue then, because "worked as a nurse" implies licensure of some kind to me.

@AzorAhai: Please mind my first comment and edit: I indeed mean having vocational training / having worked as a nurse, but that is only one way into getting accepted to a programme.

It must be more common in Germany then, because I would guess that only one student or fewer in the average American medical class would have previously been a nurse (and by "been a nurse" I mean been licensed as an LPN or RN). Not sure what you mean by "vocational training" here, but frankly I think it's a big issue with American medical schools that there is basically no vocational training for most doctors before med school, so good on Germany.

Or if there is, it's entirely volunteer-based, which is problematic anyway. No one I know in med school was previously certified as a tech of any kind. Apologies for the rants about American med school.

@AzorAhai-him- In Germany there are quite a few professions that don't require a university degree, but a "Ausbildung" instead. This is 2-3 years (depending on the profession) of basically learning on the job (and attending some related school courses on the side). To become a nurse in Germany, you also have to do this "Ausbildung" (not a university course) = vocational training.

"entrance restrictions for these fields would be bad because it would keep away some excellent students who have struggled with the school system"  - I'm not convinced this si worse than the system you describe here ...

everybody who completed high school (Abitur) As I understand it, high school and Abitur are not the same thing. "High school" (as an English phrase) refers to the final phase of secondary education regardless of whether it qualifies you for college admission, whereas Abitur is a specific academic designation awarded to graduates of some German high school programs (all/most Gymnasium programs?) that is a prerequisite for enrollment at (all/most?) German universities. In other words, there are many Germans who "completed high school" but do not meet the prereqs for university enrollment.

@Max If you consider "High school" to refer to the last phase of secondary education, then that's exactly what will result in an "Abitur" (or failure). German schools either finish after grade 10 (no Abitur), or 12/13 (Abitur). Whether it is 12 or 13 years depends on state and school, ask a question if you want to know the convoluted details of the German secondary education system. The 12/13 years schools are called "Gymnasium" and ALL "Gymnasium" end with the Abitur-exam (and degree if you pass). However, there are a bunch of specialty schools in different states, so ask if you want to know.

@Wrzlprmft you might want to add that later exams are actually even harder (at least I had to prepare more for those), but pass rates are higher nonetheless, because the not so good students have been kicked out at an early stage. Quite nice to do so early instead of dragging them along and have them fail later.

@AlanDev: It’s not really possible to test this (e.g., you cannot just correlate school grades with success, because people would have prioritised school grades more if they knew there were entrance restrictions for their intended field of study), but at least the general consensus is that imposing entrance restrictions would not change the failure rates much, but only reduce the total number of students.

@Max: I added a link, but explaining this part of the German education system in more depth would truly be beyond the scope of this answer. I think as a quick explanation, this is as accurate as you can get.

you might want to add that later exams are actually even harder – I added a sentence on this.

This is entirely correct. e.g. Uni Konstanz has more students in the first semester of Chemistry than in all others put together. Most of them fail. I find this tragic. Just demand an Abitur mark of 1 or 2 and remedy this. But then they would not have enough students to pay the bills...

One comment on admission requirements in Germany (The NC - Numerus Clausus): It's not an indication of how hard a course it but entirely a result of comparing applicants to available study spots in a given field. In the cases of maths and physics, the first semesters typically have hundreds or thousands of spots available, and not as much interest as say Medicine, so there is no NC, or a rather low one. This does not mean that it's easier than studying Medicine, which typically has a very restrictive NC, just that there's a better study spots/applicants ratio.

To complement that point: There is a legal requirement to make as many spots available as possible for a specific course of studying in Germany. So universities cannot just put up an arbitrary requirement like the NC mentioned because then applicants will (and do frequently) just sue their way in.

Maybe it also deserves to mention that BAföG (for all the non-germans: government provided support for students from poorer families) also has a restriction on the number of semesters that are supported. If a student fails in the first two semesters they typically have no issue getting support in another field, but if they fail late in their studies, the might simply be without support for trying a better suited field. Weeding out students early that are not going to make it anyways, is therefore actually doing them a favor

Your answer doesn't seem to mention the course format as a potentially relevant factor. As far as I know, lectures with group sizes in the hundreds are the still predominant course format at least in the first undergraduate years in both law and mathematics. Do you have an opinion whether is is also contributing to the high fail rates?

@Schmuddi: You have to distinguish between lectures and exercise sessions. The former usually have groups of hundreds, but then the only benefit from having fewer is that some are more encouraged to ask questions (but then also you have a higher chance of somebody asking the important questions). Groups for exercise sessions are much smaller (ten to twenty students) and this is where the interactive parts happen. With that being said, of course better teaching (in particular more/better personnel) can improve the rates, but only to a certain extent.

@RedSonja: re 1st semester chemistry having more students than all others. The failure rates are no secret, we knew them before the 1st week of the 1st semester started. I'd consider it worse to not give the students the freedom to try whether chemistry (or any other subject) is "theirs" or not. I'd find it tragic if the "sieving exams" were after years into the studies, and I'd find it tragic if people are prevented from trying out whether university studies in general and a particular field suits them. Experience from school IMHO doesn't give a very good basis for this decision.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX I can see your point. But surely if they are interested in chemistry at 19 they still will be at 20? In my experience (engineering) uni work was not much different from school, just more of it and more difficult. Perhaps a first year of mixed science would be more useful, so they have time to orient themselves. This is what my old uni does, quite successfully, for Natural Sciences, and also Engineering.

@RedSonja Indeed, and the fact that science is more difficult - and also a bit different - at university than at school can be a reason why people who were good at it at school no longer are (at least not to the same level) at university - be it because it is too difficult for them, be it because they are not working hard enough. To put it differently: If everyone who had top grades in X at school would still have top grades in X at university, what would be the point of having higher and higher levels of education, narrowing it down to people who are better and better at X?

At the university I was studying at, (at least in the engineering and science specialities) they accepted quite a large number of students into the first semesters, and then "weeded" out the not-so-great ones through very hard exams with a low pass rate in the first couple of semesters.
The reason behind this is (I guess) that the average grades from schools are not a great indicator, as school exit exams and teaching quality are not uniform, and also some people with very good specialized skills might have bad average grades because they were not overall good students in school. By using the "weeding out" method, you will filter out the students that are actually capable in the specific subject.
Even though this method might be questionable from some perspectives, it nevertheless seems quite effective to find those that really fit well with a certain subject.

The key thing here is that generally the motivation for weeding out students should not be to reduce the numbers, but to ensure that whoever is left meets some minimum standard. I once took part in giving and correcting a similarly bad first semester exam. None of us liked failing people, but we all agreed that it does not make sense to teach the continuation class to people who did not understand the basics. In fact the best compliment I ever heard was "I failed, but I thought the exam was fair."

The other reason for weeding out is to give students a second chance.  If you fail within the first six months, no big deal, you can switch to studying geography or sociology.  If you fail after having already invested three years of hard work, that's a more serious problem.

What's a "make-up exam"? Is it specific to Germany? Google didn't help much.

@EricDuminil: I think "make-up exam" is used here as a translation of the German word "Nachholklausur". It is a second instance of the exam at the end of a course (and usually takes place several weeks after the "original" exam) and it can be attended by those who failed the original exam, in order to give them a second chance to pass. ("make-up exam" since it allows a student to "make up for failing the original exam").

@JochenGlueck: Thanks. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/345326/second-chance-exam-for-those-who-failed-the-first-exam , so possibly "repeat exams", "supplementary exams", "re-takes", or indeed, "makeup exam".

Yep, slightly different context than "makeup exam" usually carries in American English, wherein there are literally no classes that will ever let you retake an exam you failed, but makeups are provided when exams are missed due to extenuating circumstances (if you're very, very lucky. I had multiple professor's who refused any form, stating "if you're circumstances are so dire that you can't make the exam, you would be better of dropping out")

I would like to add that the "make-up" exam is no different from the first exam and some students choose to take the second exam for other reasons than failing the first one, e.g. additional time to prepare or overlapping personal business

Chemist here. In addition to the points already covered in other answers:
When I was studying (≈20 years ago), the exam in our 1st semester had a fraction of IIRC 1/4 passing at the first attempt, I don't recall how many passed 2nd attempt, but all in all, about half of us eventually dropped out. Most of that happened at the beginning - and it was considered good policy to have a harsh exam first rather than finding out years later that one didn't pass the thesis exam after all.
Since someone mentioned the difficulty of lab space: back then there was an economic crisis in the chemical industry, with the side effect that we were so few students that we could have had 2 lab places each if we wanted. And the library held sufficient copies of the relevant text books for everyone. So in my case, we can exclude difficulties with these resources as reason.

That exam was put together from a large (and known! - we could look up as many old exams as we liked for preparation) pool of exam questions that had been in use for several decades,

the failure rates had also been high throughout these decades.

We did not see anything unfair, it is not that there were questions of overwhelmingly high difficulty, or misleading questions. Not even the concepts needed were all that difficult - many of them we had met to some extent in school (redox equations, law of mass action).
It didn't really make sense to go on deeper into this until one had mastered those basics.

But the sheer workload at university was radically more than what we used from school. Many of us had been very good at school (at least in natural sciences) - and in consequence we did not know yet how to actually study hard (and efficiently).

So that exam did serve as a wake-up call.
We had clearly been told that our chances are slim unless we actively put in time to study on our own throughout the whole semester. But telling was't sufficient for most of us (and I decidedly include myself here, even though I passed at the first attempt).

University told us early on that we were not treated like school children any more. No one cared how much we study at home, whether we do homework exercises or not. No one cared which textbook we use, if any. In principle, no one cared whether one attended the lecture or not (at least unless attendance was so low that it upset the lecturer, say, less than 3 [= half of us in the higher semesters]; unfortunately this argument has been abused to try to excuse bad teaching.).
All they cared was that in order to pass, we were able to solve a given amount of questions about certain topics in a given (not too large) amount of time.

Since it is discussed in some comments: Memorization was actually required to a certain extent - we very much resented it since we considered it much harder work than understanding and applying concepts (I think chemistry is heavier on this than maths or physics). Exam questions typically required both, and good scores/grades required one to be sufficiently fluent in the subject matter to actually solve all or most of the questions in time.

There were also some factors that mitigate this harsh grading policy:

The score/grade did not have any influence later on.
This changed with the transition to BSc/MSc, though.

There was no limit on how often you could take that exam (guessing wouldn't get you anywhere with those exams, btw.) or on how many years you can study (at 0 tuition). The exam was offered every semester, plus a 2nd attempt (typically later during the semester holidays, so there'd be a realistic chance to put time and effort into studying that subject).  If you failed for 2 semesters (i.e. after having failed 4 times), you had to go and have a talk with the dean who'd try to find out whether chemistry is genuinely not the right subject for you, or whether the reasons were not related to your general ability to study chemistry.
Back then, it was still considered a perfectly valid approach to work for your living and in consequence require substantially longer for your studies.

Having failed that exam prevented you from taking the follow up one. However, there was typically some leeway in the sense that you could take that exam as well, and as soon as the first failure was fixed would get that pass, too. So there was another chance not to lose a whole semester even after 2 failed attempts. (Same for labwork, btw.)
And you could go on with all subjects that did not depend on that particular exam. A failed inorganic chemistry exam would not hamper you wrt physics or math. (In math, you could anyway take math II before math I, IIRC the same for physics.)

In general, if you want to achieve consistent grading over the years:

If you think your questions may be inadvertently varying in difficulty, and this variation is larger than the (random) variation in student output => adjust the grading scale or pass level according to the score distribution

If you think your questions are of consistent level of difficulty, but student output may in fact vary more (from 2nd - 4th semester, we were between 4 and 8 students) => grade according to preset score scale
I may add that in Germany grading by a pre-specified scale applies to the vast majority of [written] exams for all subjects I'm familiar with.

My answer would cover the same aspects as Wrzlprmft's excellent answer, but with a slightly different weighting due to my field of study: Chemistry. The fail rate on the first Chemistry exam (there were also auxiliary exams in Math and Physics) was above 60% (exam plus make-up exam). Contributing factors are: large difference in available lab space versus number of first-semester students and students with no intention of studying Chemistry, who are hoping to score credit useful in their intended field of study, which is typically Medicine, Dentistry or something else that they could not get in at that point in time, but believe to get in later. In subsequent exams, the fail rate was far lower, except for the last two exams, which were just hard.
I was involved in the student government and we discussed this on occasion. The general consensus was that it was better to let everyone, regardless of achievement in high school (beyond passing the diploma: Abitur), have a chance at getting into the field. High school chemistry typically has little to do with what is taught and practically done at university level, so neither overall grade average nor Chemistry grades would be a good indicator of a successful student. While I do not have quantitative data, I can easily recall students who did well in high school, but floundered in Chemistry at university and vice versa.
Overall, it may be more useful to consider drop-out rates, especially students who do not leave e.g. Chemistry for Medicine, but "complete" drop-outs without a degree.

In programming there is a best practice guideline, which essentially boils down to fail early and fail hard. I see this principle at work here as well, it is better to let everybody have a go and weed out early, than limiting the number of students via some obscure entry test, and carry them through the studies. Using the lectures of the first year in your field seems a more targeted weeding-out-agent than some test or exam prior to beginning the studies.

In a nutshell, because the universities test qualification, not endurance.
In other words, if a hundred morons with enough money study to be a doctor, how many do you think should pass?

Does this imply that rich students must be “morons”? Or that students who do poorly must be “morons”? Or am I just overthinking everything? On another note, what does “endurance” mean in this context?

@BrianDrake My former Swahili teacher in Poland started studying economy in Polish without knowing almost any Polish. What he did is he memorized the whole book and at the exam, when he heard a familiar phrase, he just quoted a page or two—and passed. Later his Polish improved which enabled comprehension of the contents, but I supposed this is what endurance is without qualification. I would expect future doctors not just pass test in 20 tries, but in one. Would you like an accountant who is 10 times slower than his peers? What do you think of passing driving lince in 12 tries?

@MrVocabulary So can we say “memorisation” instead of “endurance”? Now we have new a problem, because apparently “memorisation” is the same as “qualification”, at least according to your anecdote. Later, you talk about students who are 10–20 times slower than their peers. Where does this come from? Didn’t your Swahili teacher pass the exam on the first try?

@BrianDrake I can't speak for the author, I just gave you an example of how endurance can be realized. But no, it is not qualification: he passed the exam with the lowest grade, but he couldn't perform any tasks related to this discipline. How is that qualification? Qualification also means you can perform consistently (excluding luck) and at a specified pace (specified period to master a skill or knowledge). Endurance is about getting to the goal of passing the exam at some point, but exams supposed to verify if you can perform adequatly in real life.

@BrianDrake I assume endurance in this case means how many times are you willing to take a stab at it and keep on trying.

@BrianDrake What are you on about? He just mentions 'rich morons', how is he implying rich people must be morons? You can be rich and dumb to my knowledge. Also, he's not saying that students that do poorly must be morons, he's implying that morons will do poorly which is probably true with a few exceptions.

Not an answer to the question specifically, but this is not unique to Germany. I would offer a perspective from Russian universities, where advanced education is free like in Germany and we also have those "eternal students", and I believe the answer should generalize reasonably well.
Now, there are all combinations of dropout rates (low/high) and how hard/prestigious the program itself is. For example, MSU/NSU would drop about 50% of their students in the first couple of years, while in MIPT this figure would range from about 10% to 30% (and harder to get into programs would have lower dropout rates). And you would also have some low-tier universities with virtually no dropouts and barely any entry requirements as well.
The reason for that is that the goal of the process is not to make students and their families feel good, it is to provide the society with highly skilled specialists - who will, in turn, have job security based on their credentials actually meaning something (in Russia, this is actually problematic now, but, as far as I know, less so in Germany). Universities fill a certain role in society, and for students, dropping out of a program they have no hopes of completing does not necessarily translate to a "failure in life". Many of the failing students would be transferred to easier programs or try to find something else entirely. I personally know quite a lot of people who either never finished their education, stopped at BSc (which is still considered weird here, despite the change to the Bologna process), or dropped out 3+ times before completing their studies. All of them do not view this experience as something hampering their future success - it is just time they have spent on soul searching and maturing.
I share the view that it is highly harmful for education to make guarantees about the future employment, even if it is being provided as a service. Failures happen; it is deceptive to paint them over, reframe them and present as successes. It is impossible to mind control the students, and without that, they may not learn no matter how much effort one expends teaching them. So, then, the best approach is to admit the problem as soon as possible instead of engaging in goalposting and redefining the program requirements to accommodate the students.
Finally, one may suggest that the dropout rates so high is a failure at the screening stage. Possibly so, but common solutions are incredibly restrictive to the student ("you will never be good at maths so there is no way we would admit you to any of the maths programs"), and the overall efficiency is debatable.
So the short answer is: more readiness to admit failure, less burden of a dropout (this includes both monetary and opportunity costs), less associated stigma.

It could be tactical behaviour by students
Now, for Germany in particular, I cannot answer, but as a student of a European university I have some experience. I failed plenty of courses. As long as there are "infinite" do-overs and you didn't at any time have more than one failed semester of courses you could proceed. If ever you got more than one semester the administrators would start making your life hard for you if you wanted to attend your classes for next year. They'd essentially make you do the year again, to catch up.
Thing is, a passing grade cannot be retaken. So if you have ambitions of getting a good grade on that particular exam, it could be tactically sound to fail it, and try it again. Especially on courses which retake-exams were organized in the end of the mid summer break. All the time in the world to prepare for one particular exam, no ongoing classes, projects or work to be delivered the same time.
Another justification would be the opposite, here are 2 difficult and 1 "easy" exams in a short interval. Let's punt the short one to next summer, focus on the hard ones.
And then there is the "oh snap" moment on the exam where you realize that your grade will be weak. Decision time: Accept weak outcome or try for better? Only way for the latter outcome is to fail the exam. Crumble your answers so far, deliver blank sheet, retake next semester.
I had my share of tactical "conts" (continuation examination). Some planned from the start of the semester, some as a split second decision in situ. But all of them on purpose. And no time lost in the end, I spent 5 years on a 5 year program.
Driving forces for this was:

Low tuition (~50$ for 2 semesters)
As many "conts" as you want
Passing grades stand! (you have to retake the entire course, tasks, laboratory exercises and all to get a do-over with a passing grade! on a failing grade you were automatically signed up for the do-over)
Short period for examinations, fairly unbalanced loads from semester to semester and enough courses in total that the hand you were dealt could be back-to-back examinations.

These kinds of tactics demonstrate why exams are such a terrible assessment method to begin with.

@BrianDrake Well, if you go for simple indicators like pass/no-pass or "grading by the curve" then I agree with you. But from my own rememberance: Having exams was necessary for me to prioritize doing the work needed to learn. To me exams are less of an assessment method than a streamlining function. This is what you must do, in order to get a grade. It incentivized preparedness, discipline and self study. (And to some degree, strategy...) These things are fairly important for anything you chose to do in life afterwards. I don't see any other efficient way to do it.

In the vast majority of exams I participated in as a student, tutor, or organiser, I am quite confident that such strategies did not apply: 1) The pre-Bologna exams were not graded at all. Also, in at least one physics programme, the grade of the first-semester math exam did explicitly not count. 2) In many cases, students could repeat exams they had passed for grade improvement without any cost or risk (and few students make use of that). 3) Many of the failing students were desperate to pass the exam (as evidenced by pleas, cheating, etc.). — And yet, the failure rates were the same.

My daughter (here in Germany) actually suggested failing an exam on purpose, to get a better mark next time. It was suggested to her that she pay her own fees and upkeep in future...

We (Germany, but long ago) had something similar: if you took an exam earlier than supposed by the curriculum, you could choose whether to keep that grade or try again. However, back when I was studying, most exam grades did not end up on your Diploma sheet, so the incentive was low in that respect. This is different now with BSc/MSc grades averaging basically everthing you do. (Also for us, failed exam => redo exam. Failed labwork => redo labwork, they were not usually bundled into courses that had to be retaken as a whole, though I think this may be varying between universities)

Well, this is extremely egoistical. It's a complete waste of time for the teachers and the administration. It's great that tuitions are low, except when they're abused by people who seem to conveniently forget that taxpayers have to pay the real price. Sigh....

@Eric I'd say the students are merely acting on their incentives. It isn't egoistic in a stronger sense than any other capitalistic behavior. The students have the smallest mandate to change the system. I wouldn't call them the abusers. I suspect written exams exist because they are the absolute least burden on professor time so it can't be that bad.

@EricDuminil: I doubt that "egoistical" is an appropriate description of this behaviour. In my experience, grades have a significant influence on future career perspectives; thus, we cannot expect students to simply live with bad grades in order to save the course instructors a bit of work. Also, I agree with Stian that the marginal cost caused by somewhat who intentionally fails an exam in order to retake it, is negligible (it might even be negative). I would not hestitate to advise my own students to do precisely this if they are confident that they will do better next time.

In Germany, you generally can only retake an exam 3 times and not unlimited times. After that, you are permanentely excluded from further studying anything that has the course you failed as requirement - which in case of e.g. basic math courses can mean a lot of things. This is why this tactic is not very common in Germany because the risk is too great.

@Sursula: That depends on the programme. In some, you have infinite attempts.

I want to add another perspective.
Background: I was a tutor/teaching assistant for a first semester engineering mechanics course for several years (doing exercises, exam creation, exam grading, etc.) during my PhD at a German university.
We usually had failure rates at around 60 %, even with a low passing threshold of 1/3 of the total points. However, this was considered acceptable, because in every cohort, there was always a number of students who "got it" and achieved excellent grades with above 90 % of the total points. This showed us that the exam was not impossible or unfair. The grade distribution always looked like a skewed bathtub curve; many "failed", some "good/very good", almost nothing in between.
We usually had to deal with a great number of students in the first semester (around 500) and students assumed that our course was used to "weed out" weak students. However, we never intentionally aimed at this goal.
After the first four semesters, most weak students have dropped out and failure rates generally decline, although courses are becoming more advanced and exams more difficult.

Sounds like the entry requirements for the course are too low.

@Ian: Quite likely, there was either no admission requirements at all, or only a rather loose one. Public universities (read: almost all universities) in Germany are required by law to admit all students who have a certain degree from highschool (named the "Abitur"). Restrictions of admission are only possible if the capacity of the university does not suffice to offer teaching to all students who apply. Since lectures can be scaled to many hundreds of students, this does not result in strong admission restrictions for many programs. [...]

[...] Concerning the course itself: As this was a first semester course, there are no entry requirements for the course. The generel idea in Germany is that the "Abitur" certifies sufficient qualification to just start studying any subject. Nobody checks whether some students might need additional preparation for a specific course, and there is no such thing as "remedial courses".

@Ian As Jochen suspected, there were no entry requirements for either the course or the degree program. Anyone with a "Allgemeine Hochschulreife" (general university entrance qualification) could attend the course, which you automatically obtain after Abitur/high school. This removes entry barriers and liberates higher education, as poor students could not afford private prep courses. On the other hand, I personally know students who have wasted years in the "wrong" degree program.

I am currently enrolled in a public university (in my case known as "Hochschule") for economic computer science so I can offer some of my insight.
The difficulty of the subjects ranges from very basic and essentially freebies up to insanely difficult with the latter being usually a 1st semester subject. The goal of the teachers in the first semester is to filter out a lot of the less determined students thus causing high failure rates. The further you progress into your major, the easier it usually becomes.
Since the lecturers decide the contents of the exams it can not be said that x subject has the same difficulty across the country. In my university, the math basics for computer science that is being taught in the first semester is the highest difficulty exam you can experience in our university. It is not uncommon for students to have cleared out every single exam and have 145 out of 150 credit points due to not being able to finish this subject.
At the same time, many subjects have a final exam that lasts 60 or 90 minutes with the former being more common due to corona regulations. A semesters worth of content is impossible to condense down to this short of a exam time so luck becomes a factor. A student has about 6 subjects to pass each semester so being prepared perfectly for each is unlikely.´This means that many students that studied decent enough are still at odds to fail if a question that is worth 20 out of 60 points isn't something they are well prepared for.

+1 The "145 out of 150 credits" issue seems to be quite a common problem. When I studied mathematics, there was a third semester course on "measure theory" which many students considered to be the "killer" course within the program. Sometimes there were students who had already completed their Bachelor's thesis, and then finally had to quit because they failed the "measure theory" exam too often. Very sad, and an incredible waste of resources.

@JochenGlueck I agree with you, it is a waste of resources and feels incredibly unfair that all your efforts and successes across years can be brought low by a single subject.

@JochenGlueck Hah, yes. My nemesis was "applied thermodynamics". Should have been named "Strictly hypothetical thermodynamics" or "Ponderously complicated numerical optimization problems requiring matrix computations you have yet to learn"

@StianYttervik Mine is enterprise resource planning. Due to Corona the classes were held online and the style of the exam was overhauled during each semester putting many others including me into the situation of having cleared every subject except one.
It's a incredibly unfair feeling since this is not a problem any of us would have encountered if we started university a bit earlier.

@StianYttervik That is very reminiscent to the cryptography course I partook in. Suddenly we already had to be familiar with group theory, set theory, matrix calculations and some other advanced theory from linear algebra. I think only a third passed the course in the end.

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Were International Students discouraged from applying to the US this year?
This is out of curiously - were there many international applicants were planning to apply to the US this past admissions cycle but chose not to because of the current administration/political climate?

I suggest to change the title so this question does not look like a poll.

Or could it be the length or teaching style of the courses compared to other places ..

Here're a couple of studies on this issue: One, Two.
There was a small decline - about 1-5% - in both applications and enrollment. This comes after years of growth. Whether the decline is because of the US's political climate though remains unanswered. Possibly - but it could also be a statistical blip.
For comparison, we also have record numbers of international applicants to UK universities in spite of Brexit.

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text:
Distinguishing "Presentations" and "Experience" in CV for application for Ph.D
I'm working on a CV for a Mathematical Sciences Ph.D program. Though I don't have any papers published, I have contributed to a number of research groups and given some hour-long presentations. I also did some presentations as part of my capstone projects in both of my undergraduate majors (math and chemistry). I thus think it's valuable to have a "Presentations" section on my CV for now until I have papers published.
However, some of the info in the "Presentations" section would necessarily overlap with some of the info in my "Employment" section, e.g.:

"Developed and presented an improved C algorithm for [analyzing
simulations for xxx structure] using [mathematical
technique]."
"Presented a literature review on [use of a mathematical technique in
simulation] including a detailed overview to the research
group on [mathematical algorithm used for analysis]."

How can I distinguish the two sections? Should I emphasize the content of the presentation more in the "presentation" section, and my day-to-day routine more in the "employment" section?
Any other suggestions?

How can I distinguish the two sections? Should I emphasize the content of the presentation more in the "presentation" section, and my day-to-day routine more in the "employment" section?
Answer #1) I would distinguish the two sections by calling one, "Presentation Experience". The ability to execute lengthy and quality presentations is a very valuable and rare capability. Not many people can do it well. I consider myself to be a poor presenter and I've personally witnessed people who present worse than I would. By all means, accentuate your presentation experience by providing as much context as possible. Let the reader feel like they can almost "see" the presentation as it took place.
Answer #2) I don't think it's detrimental if there is a little overlap between your job duties and your presentations. Simply don't provide much or any information about your presentations in your job duties section. You might mention that one of your current job duties is to make oral presentations as required/needed.

Well, my current job is a teacher, so I'd consider that pretty much constant presentations. My presentation experience is primarily from undergraduate research internships.

@OpalE Then I would focus on the internship presentations in the "Presentation Experience" section. Most readers would understand that they are much more formal.

Potential phrasing: "Developed and presented an improved C algorithm for [analyzing simulations]. The presentation included detailed description of the algorithm, instruction on its implementation, several test cases, and analysis of its performance." Would this be too short?

@OpalE I'd describe the venue, location, and crowd size as well. Let the reader get a real feel for the intensity of the conference. They might like to know about the stress level you can endure in that situation. Presenting to 5 people would possibly be viewed as easy. 100 people would intimidate many of us and we'd look at you as being quite capable. Mention if there were any high-profile people in your audience.

I'm not sure an audience of 30 looks impressive unless I mention that I was the only undergradate in a room of grad students, postdocs and professors. I don't know how I would mention that without it sounding like an excuse.

@OpalE You could mention it matter-of-factly, such as , "The presentations were generally attended by about 30 people, forming  audiences that consisted mostly of graduate students, post-docs, and professors. Their fields of interest varied from whatever to whatever."

Ok one more question (sorry!) My two undergraduate capstone presentations happened later and were less impressively attended than my presentations with the research group (audience of faculty and peers); should I still list in reverse chronological order?

@OpalE I would consider listing the presentations according to the importance level, "low to high" or "high to low". Certainly list the number of attendees. Your readers will still be able to see the largest value of 30. Small numbers aren't a bad thing. The range of sizes would suggest to readers that you are experienced and comfortable with a range of audiences. I wouldn't know why, but some presenters might be more comfortable with larger audiences.

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Do reviewers see other reviewer's comments/scores?
I have read that reviewers actually see other reviewers' comments during reviewing process of a conference (e.g. via easychair website). If that is the case; is that including the scores too? If so, wouldn't that affect the reviewer's decision?

Yes, in easychair, once you submit your own review, you can see all of the information (reviewer names, reviewer scores, reviewer comments) that others have submitted. There is then often a conference call where the review committee (including all reviewers) discusses the merits of each paper in view of all of the reviews and scores, to make a decision about each paper.
Because one has to upload one's own review before seeing the other reviewers' scores and comments, there is a certain amount of insulation from group think. But in the end, the model of easychair is that all reviewers together take on the role of editor, and that they have to come to a conclusion. That is, I think, a valid model to deal with identifying good and bad papers. My experience is that it is no worse than separating the role of the editor from that of reviewers.

"they have to come to a conclusion" In my field, it's also quite common that the reviewers "agree to disagree" and leave the final decision to someone else (the program chairs or a program board). But per default, they are indeed encouraged to find a consensus.

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For applications where prospective students upload transcripts, is there a preference between scanned official vs unofficial transcripts?
It is my understanding that most graduate schools will want you to mail them a sealed transcript if accepted, but my question is about the application process.
I thought that I could upload an unofficial transcript that I retrieved from the school's web portal, but after some more investigation it appears that maybe I should upload a scanned copy of an official transcript.
Of course an official transcript is no longer official once it is unsealed.  But do graduate schools prefer it that way?  The answer might vary depending on the department, but I think a scanned version might be the safe bet.  Although, it would require a bit more effort on my part to request an official transcript.
Edit
I should have included this originally, but I didn't want to make the question specific to one school.  But this school is specific about wanting a scanned copy, whereas others are not.  I'm just wondering if it should be assumed that a scanned copy is preferred if not made explicit.
From FAQ:

Do I need to mail hard copies of official transcripts in addition to the transcripts uploaded with my application?
No, simply upload a scanned version of an official transcript that has been "Issued to Student." It is understood that once you open the envelope to scan the transcript it is no longer considered official. It may also be possible that the scanned copy may have the watermark COPY on it, which is fine. Do NOT mail transcripts to the Department nor the Graduate School unless asked by the Department to do so.

Obviously, if I were to apply to this school I should use a scanned copy, but it's what caused me to reconsider if this is really what other schools want as well even if they don't state it explicitly.

Right.  But the online application forms will have a field where you upload a transcript.  From what I've seen they request you send a sealed transcript if accepted.  Since you're expected to upload a transcript online, it must be unofficial.  I just don't know if there might be something a web transcript would lack that the official paper copy might have.

That piece of information changes things. I would follow their instructions to the letter, but you should email them to clarify that they don't want an unofficial one.

graduate schools will want you to mail them a sealed transcript — Correction: If graduate schools want an official transcript, they won't want you to send it; they will want your undergraduate university to send it.

If an "unofficial transcript" is requested, generally they just want something that contains the relevant information: courses taken, grades, any disciplinary sanctions, etc.
It might be most convenient to scan an official transcript, because then it will be in the most familiar format, but as far as I know it is also fine to, for instance, retrieve your own records from your university's system and print the relevant pages to PDF.
On the other hand, transcripts are usually printed on special paper that causes words like "COPIED" or "VOID" to appear on any copies or scans that are made.  Of course if the department only wants an unofficial transcript, they should not care that it is a copy, but sometimes it's hard to read a transcript if it says "COPIED" all over it.  So whatever you send, make sure it's legible.
Of course, as you say, an official transcript (sealed, by mail) will usually be demanded if you are accepted and/or decide to attend, and woe be unto you if it does not match the unofficial transcript you provided with the application.
It can't hurt to contact the department and ask what they would prefer.


text:
Is material produced for a course considered property of the department?
I was asked last year to set up a completely new course, far from my expertise (say, you work on differential equations but they ask you to teach general relativity). The department did not give me much space/resources to do so but anyway I did it very successfully and on a very short notice (based on student's evaluations etc.)

Does the department have the right to take all the material I developed and give it to a new instructor, say next year?
Do they need my agreement and do I have the right to refuse to do so?
Can I take the entire developed course in, for example, a new institution in case I move away? Or the department can claim that it was part of my paid job so it is theirs?

On an ethical level I find it unfair that I had to put an insane amount of work only for the department to come and claim my work and give it "for free" to a new instructor. But I am not sure if legally I can do anything about that.
For what is worth, I am in an academic institution in the Netherlands. I am assistant professor (UD) and, according to the rules (at least in my institution) my job is not to develop new courses, but only to deliver/maintain existing courses in the curriculum.

What is  your role, are you faculty?

@Roland Nothing. Actually, according to the rules, it is not even my job (as assistant professor) to create new courses. But I did (without extra compensation).

@DanielHatton Thanks! I have been disappointed so many times, one more won't make any difference.

This is a question that really depends on local custom and policy.  At my institution, there's a clear policy that I own the copyright to materials that I produce for my teaching unless those materials were produced with extra institutional support (e.g. I'm paid extra to develop the course or the institution provides an instructional designer to help in developing a course.)
I'm aware that at many other institutions in the US, instructional content (course syllabi, lecture slides, assignments, etc.) are considered to be work for hire and owned by the institution.  This is very helpful when a course is frequently taught by contingent faculty.

Thanks. As I have updated on my question, it is not even part of my job to create new content (this is reserved for Assoc. Profs and higher). I did that without getting compensated. I wonder if in any case the department can act as they own whatever material I have developed.

I will limit my answer to what is customary among academics.  If you want to know what is legal, read your employment contract.  The contract is what is enforceable.

Does the department have the right to take all the material I developed and give it to a new instructor, say next year?

Academics feel the instructor owns the course design they made, so no.

Do they need my agreement and do I have the right to refuse to do so?

Yes they need your agreement, but the ethical and customary thing to do would be to agree.

Can I take the entire developed course in, for example, a new institution in case I move away? Or the department can claim that it was part of my paid job so it is theirs?

Yes, you can take the course materials with you to use with a new employer.

I can't address the legal questions you ask (nor do people usually on this site).
Are they claiming such rights, or are you just worried that they might?
My experience in the United States with material I've developed is that I'm delighted when anyone wants to use it. I make it available to my colleagues at my school and elsewhere, and can take it with me to use and revise if I change jobs.
When I have turned such material into a textbook I have owned the rights and royalties (although I always arranged not to collect royalties when I assigned my book to my students).

I have absolutely no problem with colleagues asking for my material. But I am wondering if the department can simply hand them over to a new teaching stuff (the question is not theoretical, this is consistent with their inner workings here). Basically they said to me "develop the course till the expert comes and s/he can pick it up from there". Besides, I might be leaving so I wonder what happens to the material developed.

That suggests that they told you in advance that they wanted to continue using the material even if you weren't there. If you accepted that arrangement then I guess that was part of what you were paid for. I suspect you could still use/revise the material elsewhere in the future. If you're on reasonable terms with the department chair, perhaps just ask. We can't do more to help you from this distance.

Well, I did not agree to do other people's job! I do not know what they had in mind. If the new person asks politely then that is one thing. But I wonder if the department can see whatever I have developed as their property and can do whatever they please with it.


text:
Is it acceptable for the secretary to have full access to our entire Outlook agenda?
Today we were asked by the management of our department to give full access of our agenda in Outlook to the secretary. By full access, I mean the possibility to look, read, write, delete (own) slots in the agenda. It was mentioned that it's imperative not to alter any settings so the entire agenda will be visible to them.
The rationale is that sometimes people come in the department looking for us and by giving full access of our agenda, the secretary can advise these people on when/how to contact us.
On a personal note, I have never experienced something like that. People who want to find me can call me or send me email. I do not see why I should give access to my Outlook agenda, where I also store personal events.
So my natural question is: Is this normal/acceptable? How can I
politely say that this, in my opinion, is an unacceptable practice
possibly violating privacy?
My department is located in the Netherlands for what it's worth. No prior communication of this problem has been done/discussed.

Perhaps this would be an impetus to take your personal events off your work calendar, and instead share them with your work calendar with details hidden.

@AzorAhai Probably I did not make myself clear: they request full author level access without the possibility to alter any settings. This means that no detail can be hidden: they will be able to see the entire agenta with all details.

Do you have tenure? If you do, there’s always the possibility of refusing to comply, or only partially complying (e.g. by refusing to give the secretary write access). If you don’t have tenure, you could also refuse to comply, but keep in mind that doing so might be a career-limiting move.

I don't know how Outlook agendas work, but is it possible for you to make an "official" one for work and a "personal" one, and just share the official one (which possibly you don't need to use at all, or just include a minimal amount of information---lecture times, office hours)?

You can mark private appointments as "private" in Outlook, and then they should not be visible to anyone except yourself.

I would be sorely tempted to populate my calendar with intensely, embarrassingly personal information, just to see what happens!

Is there anything that requires you to actually put your appointments into Outlook? Can you keep your own personal calendar on (e.g.) Google?

The unrelated extended discussion about the dictatorial state has been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

Is your manager's definition of "full" access that same as yours?  You have interpreted as read, write and delete access but you state that it is so that "the secretary can advise ... people on when/how to contact us".  That sounds to me like more like "read only" access is being requested not any kind of update access.  For many people not versed in "database speak", "full access" can simply mean the ability to look in your diary.

@VinceO'Sullivan They requested access to write/create items in the agenta and delete own items. I assume that own items mean to delete their own previously crated ones and not my own.

Isn't managing your schedule one of the core parts of your secretary's job description? Why should I pay a secretary if she doesn't make my appointments?

One important caveat: This is not your calendar. The PC, the outlook license and the calendar are all paid for by your institution. Just like a wall-calendar hanging in a shared office. If you write something on the wall-calendar, everyone who walks by can read or edit it. Just like the institution could use "your" desk or "your" chair for something else while you are not using them. - Using work items for private stuff always comes with caveats.

My own perspective on this from the UK is that it is completely normal outside universities that outlook calendars are made fully accessible by anyone in the org. Many of my non-academic friends continually express surprise that I am allowed to keep my calendar private (I just share busy/free information). Even within universities, all of my professional service colleagues are expected to make their schedules accessible. On the other hand, this would seem to be a place where in general academics tend to be privileged, and I've not heard of faculty colleagues who have been forced to make their calendar public.

It somehow negates the "advantage" of being in academia. Especially the imperative tone of the announcement, without any prior discussion and the lameness of the excuse for enforcing such a thing.

"Many of my non-academic friends continually express surprise that I am allowed to keep my calendar private (I just share busy/free information)".  I'm in the private sector, and other people in the company can only see my busy/free status.  Frankly, it shocks me that it doesn't work like this everywhere.

@PsySp - I agree it sounds lame, but it is the same reason that my friends in other organisations are given for having to make their calendars availalbe. My guess is that the person making this demand either a) Is fresh from such an organisation, and doesn't understand that academia is different or b) Does understand that i has behaved differently, but thinks it's time Uni's start behaving like "proper" businesses.

@IanSudbery The person making this demand is a very established academic with many years of academic (and only academic) experience. If they want our department to behave like a proper business, they could also raise our salaries to the industry levels as well.

Anyone in your organization can edit your calendar?!

We share google calendars, but nobody can edit them and if I wanted to, I could create a private event. Even if I couldn't, I could always create an event that's just called "Busy".

Your answer seems to answer reading part. But what about writing and deleting items? Anyone in your organization ever could delete your meetings from your calendar?

@Mołot Writing items makes sense. In my office, if there's a meeting that everyone is required to attend, the secretary will just add it to everyone's calendar. Removing/cancelling is similar. Outlook also keeps a record of who creates, deletes, and modifies events.

This is unreasonable.  The scheduling part is reasonable, but there is no good reason I can think of to let a secretary that doesn't answer to you know who you are meeting with or exactly what you are doing every minute of the day.  This seems HIGHLY invasive.  I would simply make your free/busy times available without making a stink about it, and delegating the secretary appointment-making abilities.
Of course, if your chair wants to make a departmental secretary available to you to manage your calendar, this has value and you might want to consider it.
Also, you are entitled to manage your own time.  If you would like to be rigid about your availability and office hours, as people who are very serious about their time management seem to be, your secretary should not be able to override it.

I agree with the general idea, two additional aspects: a) from the technical side, Outlook allows to show just the busy/free information, this is just a question of using the suitable Outlook features b) from the legal side, in the Netherlands you fall under the EU data privacy laws, if for example you call in sick for a day, you are 'busy' all day which should be public within the company. On the other hand, everyone being able to check who had how many sick days last year is almost certainly not legal.

@quarague -  I would agree with you, but note the OP was asked to provide full access, not just free/busy time.

My idea was that this would provide OP with arguments to the administration as to why their request is a bad idea in general and what they should do instead. That might be more productive that just telling the administration 'no'.

I don't understand why this is invasive. This is your work calendar, not your personal calendar.

@DrMcCleod: work calendars may contain information that is exclusively related to work, but should still not be visible to other employees. Staff at university may have appointments with students who ask for confidentiality. For a obvious examples, think e.g. of the work calendar of an ombudsperson, or someone who is in the staff council.

@DrMcCleod I have "Physio" in my work calendar (so I don't organize meetings that clash with it).  I can imagine other people want to put "Psychologist", or "AIDS clinic" in for the same reason, without other people being able to read that.)

@MartinBonnersupportsMonica that's why you would keep private events separate and mark the time slot in the work calendar just as "unavailable" or "private event" etc.

I would probably object to it. However:
Someone has a problem that they need solved and came up with a "solution" that they didn't think through very deeply. While the solution may be objectionable, the problem remains. Perhaps you or yourself and a few others can explore the issue and come up with a better solution that doesn't interfere with your own work flows and privacy.
At a very minimum, if there is no solution but to grant access, the people given access should have very clear, written, rules about what can be modified or even revealed about your documents.
But, in today's world, there are probably solutions that you can devise that meet everyone's needs. See if you can help find them.
I think this is a case of simple carelessness.

Thanks. I would agree that it is indeed a case of carelessness if it was isolated incident and if we knew about that. It is not rocket science to inform us about the issue and discuss about solutions. But the phrasing was very imperative (we should give full access).

'Someone had a problem that they need solved and came up with a "solution" that they didn't think through very deeply' - how true! And how much of bureaucracy's misery is due to this. Words of wisdom of the year. Upvote +100. Is there a way of giving you points as a bounty?

@CaptainEmacs once the question is 2 days old you can set a bounty and then award it however you like.  https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/bounty

So my natural question is: Is this normal/acceptable?

This is quite normal. Especially those in management positions (and to a lesser extent, people in faculty positions are also frequently involved in management tasks) often have the secretariat managing their calendars. For example, when picking a date for a meeting, the secretariat should be able to see when the participants are available. The secretariat may also need to be able to view details of other appointments, for instance to determine if the location is not too far away from a different meeting they want to plan on your behalf, or to decide whether some less important meeting can be rescheduled to accommodate something more important.

I do not see why I should give access of my Outlook agenta, where I also store personal events.

This is not a very strong argument. You could simply store your personal appointments somewhere else (i.e., in your personal, not work calendar). If you object on this basis, your employer would probably tell you to do exactly that.

How can I politely say that this, in my opinion, is unacceptable practice possibly violating privacy?

It is a violation of your privacy, but only a very slight one. The university has a legitimate interest in making your calendar accessible to the secretariat. Legally, this would probably outweigh any privacy concerns.

In my (non-Dutch) organization, I fine tune the access per person. I have an assigned admin, and they get full rights. Other admins can view, but not edit. For the stated rationale, full access is not needed, only view (and in Outlook the viewing privileges can include or exclude private items).

What is remarkable is that full access (i.e., author privilege) is required. It's one thing to be observant, another to have admin access. On a related topic, I am not in a management position but a faculty member. Finally, "people coming to meet you and cannot find you" is not a legitimate excuse, at least not more than "I store personal details in my agenta".

@PsySp Giving full access does not cause any more privacy violation than having read-only access.

Yes it does, because if you do not have full access, it simply shows as "busy" to other people.

@PsySp In my understanding "author privilege"/"admin access" is being able to edit appointments. Whether one is able to view the details or just "busy/not busy" is another setting/level of privilege.

@TomvanderZanden That is exactly my point. We were asked to give full access of read/write/modify/delete (own) slots.

@PsySp How does that violate privacy more than just being able to view the details of appointments (without being able to edit them)? You may want to edit your question to focus just on the "view details" versus "view busy/not busy" issue. Whether they can (in addition) write/modify/delete doesn't matter.

@TomvanderZanden The question is: why is it required to look at the entire details of my agenta? If it is only about scheduling appointments, then the content of the other appointments should be irrelevant.

@PsySp I added some reasons why they might need full details to my answer.

I don't really see the issue: if you want to store private details of your life in your work-provided Outlook calendar, then you are free to do so -- but you can't then expect privacy to be a good argument. Just use a personal calendar for personal stuff.

@WolfgangBangerth -- then you'll have conflicting appointments scheduled by a secretary who can't see your real free times.  I think it's all or none -- at least with respect to free/busy data

@ScottSeidman not really.  You keep  your personal calendar with all your personal details, and double-enter your personal appointments into your work calendar, including only minimal details.  The extra work is annoying, but it is the common way to keep private things private and also to mark time as busy.

@ScottSeidman There is also of course the issue that an employer can reasonably expect you to be around during certain core hours. If you schedule private things during those times (excluding doctors appointments and similar issues that can be listed in both calendars), then you have to deal with the consequences if your employer requires you during that time. I recognize that academia is often more relaxed about working hours, but it's not unreasonable that an employer would expect you to be around during certain hours.

@WolfgangBangerth -- to a certain extent, I can agree, but generally, we have a lot of different responsibilities, and the academic environment leans toward letting the faculty decide when they want to get stuff done.  If, for example, Tuesday is my research day, I might not want to attend meetings or see students.  If I wanted to be in an environment where my employer managed all my time, I might have chosen a different career path.

Double entering could be automated using calendar feeds. I wonder if google has a busy/free feed option.

@ScottSeidman Typically when such a system is in place, you can tell the secretariat to only schedule meetings in certain time slots or even that they should batch confirm with you the meetings they make. It is an easy way to give them information and take management issues out of your hands giving you more time to do other things you really care about.

Outlook has various levels of privilege that you can give to other users.
Give the secretary "Editor" privileges, and mark all of your private appointments with the "private" flag.
The secretary can then see when you are available, and can add or remove appointments for you but not modify or delete appointments that you have made.  By setting the private flag on your private appointments, the secretary can only see that you have an appointment but not what it is about.
That setup will allow you to (mostly) comply with the requirements while maintaining as much of your privacy as possible.

As others have said, Outlook and the Exchange server behind it belong to your employer.  Any data on their system must be assumed to be visible to your employer.  As such, if you really want to keep your private appointments private then you shouldn't have them on your employer's system.
Requesting access to your calendar is reasonable.  You are there to work for the company (university,) so your supervisors and higher ups have an interest in knowing when you are there and potentially available to be talked to.
Since most people are clueless about the access rights you can set in Outlook, you ended up with a request (command?) to give the secretary full access to your calendar when less would have done.
You might want to ask if the use of limited rights was even considered - maybe whoever wrote the directive knows nothing about the limited rights.  Or, knows but thinks it is too difficult to explain to all of the users in your department.

It may also be that the Dutch translation for the various rights is as stupid as the German translation in earlier versions of Outlook.  They were named something useless like "Level 1," "Level 2," etc.   I've just checked, and current Outlook (Office 365) has finally gotten decent translations.

Thank you! I think this might be the best solution and I hope that by marking my appointments as "private" they will not  be able to see their actual content (they requested "author" privilege and I am not sure if that prevents them to see the items I mark as private)

Before you discuss this, please be aware that there are administrative settings available that can override any setting you set, and these settings can be set by Exchange Server administrators without you noticing at all. If they just went into their Exchange Server configuration and added the secretary to the "Full Access" list of your mailbox (which includes your calendar), there would be no discussion and you couldn't even see that this access was granted.
By law, in most of the U.S., the "personal" business calendar of an employee is owned completely by the organization, not the employee, so the employee cannot expect privacy. A U.S. organization would not breach any law if they granted someone else access to your whole mailbox.
In most of Europe, on the other hand, the employee can expect some privacy in his "personal" business calendar, and any other provision has to be written down and discussed with the employee in advance. Adding someone to the "Full Access" list would breach several privacy laws at once. If a European organization wants to give someone "Full Access" to other people's calendars, they have to get written consent from the affected employees, which is easier if a valid reason is given. European organizations, if they grant "Full Access" extensively, usually have already amended their work contract templates.
Be assured that, in both cases, the use of such access to modify entries is visible to the affected employee. In case someone creates an entry at 7 a.m. for a meeting at 8 a.m., but you come in at 9 as usual, and your boss asks you where you have been, you both can see in Outlook who created the calendar entry and when.

"Written consent" from an employee is completely worthless in Europe. An employee cannot consent to anything, because the employer-employee relationship implies a certain unbalance of powers which means consent is not considered "freely given". Under GDPR, a necessary and sufficient condition for an employer to make an outlook calendar accessible is having a "legitimate interest".

It is not only "acceptable," but plain common sense, unless you consider "academic privilege" is the right to continue to manage your time in the same way 100 years ago.
Suppose someone has set up a meeting with 10 attendees, and needs to cancel it. What exactly is the purpose of all 10 people making changes, and interrupting their own work to do that, when one person (a secretary/PA) can make all the changes, most likely do the task quicker than the 10 individuals because that is the sort of work they are employed to do?
And how much time is wasted when one of the attendees "forgets" to delete the cancelled meeting, and therefore disrupts scheduling a different meeting in the same time slot, and/or turns up at the meeting room and wastes half an hour wondering why everyone else is late, and eventually trying to contact somebody to find out what is going on? (Good luck trying to contact the original meeting organizer after the meeting would have started - they probably cancelled it because they had something more important to do at that time, and they are now doing it!)
If you really think this is unacceptable, you should persuade the university to fire all non-academic support staff.
Industry figured this stuff out as soon as the tools to implement it were available. Maybe the stereotype of "people living in ivory towers" is actually an accurate description!

That's all good and fine but notice that in order to do that, you do not need full access to know the details and whereabouts of each individual. If my slot says I'm free, them I'm free

This doesn't really represent how people work, in my experience. (For reference, I'm in industry.) People usually plan their day out and then only refer back to the calendar on an as-needed basis. So if they come in at 8am, think "I have xyz from 8:30 to 9:30, and then a meeting in the main conference room at 10, so I'll pick up a coffee on my way there..." and then they don't look at the calendar again! If events disappear "by magic" off of the calendar they will 100% not notice. We use the normal Outlook protocol for canceling meetings where it sends an e-mail.

(We also don't have a secretary planning out meetings for us, except for execs who have their own personal secretaries, instead meetings are planned by talking to find a good time. So having fully accurate availability information is not necessary on the calendar--but most people do leave their work meetings publicly visible. On the other hand, we have "core hours" when you can expect most people to at least be "at work", which may not hold in academia.)

"Suppose someone has set up a meeting with 10 attendees, and needs to cancel it." Then that person sends a cancellation for the meeting to all attendees, and Exchange automatically and immediately sets the cancelled meeting to the FreeBusyStatus of "Free", which allows everyone to create a new meeting invite. That's how it works. Write access to other calendars is only required if someone manages your time for you, because it's their job to do it. For example, if you are a Telco service technician, the Telco phone support will manage your time (when to repair what and where).

Consider that this is your employer's outlook license, paid and provided by your employer, to enable you working more effectively for him. So technically, you don't have any rights to a single bit in the content, and he can do with it what he wants.
Practically, many people feel this as intrusive, and I don't like it either. But as explained before, you can only hope for their goodwill.
Note that every appointment / meeting has a flag Private, and if you set that, the secretary will still not see anything inside it, only the invited people can see it. I use that for example for Doctor's appointments or other personal appointments that I don't want them to see.
Depending on the secratary's ethics and mindset, she can complain about that, and you have no choices (other than quitting), or she understands and will never say a word, especially when you use it sparingly or for appointments that are ouside of work times.

The OP said they were in the Netherlands.  "you don't have any rights to a single bit in the content" is completely false in the Netherlands (and the rest of the EU).

This is more of a "how to use Outlook" question (do we have an Office SE?)  Or a workplace relations question.  Not an Academia question.
It is really fine.  Several answers say no, but they are in the "not used to it" category.
This is your workplace email--they can do what they want with it.  Also, it is very reasonable to give full access to a personal admin (dedicated secretary).  Dept secretary not that different.
Note:

You can still make individual extremely private appointments (proctologist, affair-mate) completely private at the APPOINTMENT level (you click a box). Leave your routine work stuff (committees, students, etc. open to the secretary. She needs that when juggling meetings.  Might even get some help from her.
You can keep your email confidential.  (When I had a dedicated assistant, I gave full permission for that, though.  Just have to use a personal email for personal traffic.)

No it's not normal.
Context: Netherlands, with some academia experience but mostly in industry, albeit in IT and software development in places where no-one wears a tie.
It is normal to share one's calendar to the extent that your co-workers know when you are available. I usually share the details also, and put down private events as private. This is because i want people to be able to see what meetings i may have so that it is easier to plan. For example if i'm unavailable at a certain date because of a meeting they know can or will be rescheduled, they could still ask me to meet them at that time-slot.
Demanding you grant secretaries access rights to reschedule your agenda is stupid because it will eventually lead to the calendar not showing the actual events. If your dentist appointment is removed, you will still go to the dentist and people at work will not know that you are not at work.
Now if you had your own secretary, who you instruct to schedule appointments on your behalf, that would be different.
It is entirely possible that management is clueless about outlook access rights, and/or  not very competent. Maybe just informing them that secretaries and others should only have read-access to a persons calendar would suffice to change these new rules.

Thanks! I also don't understand why they do not adopt the simple solution of sharing our agenta and then they can look and plan accordingly. But requesting "author" privilege strikes me as odd! I am willing to believe that, as other users have also said, they did not put much thought into that (although one may argue that the imperative tone of the request might suggest otherwise)

You got in other answers all the reasons why your calendar should be open.
I keep my calendar private with free/busy information available, mostly for two reasons:

I have confidential information. Simply the name of the meeting ("disciplinary meeting with Mr X - slacking off at work") or a list of participants may be problematic. Depending on your role this may apply or not.
I am allowed by law (in France, I guess Netherlands may be close to that too) to have private items in my calendar. Nobody is allowed to have access to these items beside me. This can be solved, however, with the "Private" flag on an Outlook meeting (and restricting access to these meetings)

@Heutl: that one was obviously tongue-in-cheek. But yes, there are many meetings which titles are confidential (say, "Production Line X incident review", "Disciplinary case John X", "vulnerability of web site xxx") → all these can be used to gain intelligence about possible issues in an organization. Again - in academia it may be less pronounced but still (it is certainly the case in companies, especially starting from a certain level)