Discouraged

I have had a very interesting semester of class, teaching a new curriculum that has gelled very well. Of course, there are some big changes I will make next semester when I teach it. I gave the students too much to do on the first assignment, and it ended up taking twice as long as I had expected. Next semester I'll scale it way back, so I can give them more time to work on their research projects.
But this semester, despite the very very good discussions and classes I have had, for most of the semester,despite the enthusiasm of the students, who are always engaged and interested, the place has emptied out because students who were passing, students with C+ or even B- averages, don't want those grades. Anything less than an A won't do. So despite the fact that they need to learn these skills and no one teaching Writing 2 at our college is guaranteed to be easier than I am, one student told me that she was probably going to drop and go take a class at Saddleback, our sister college, that is equivalent to this one and requires only one essay. Everyone gets an A, she said.
I pointed out that when she gets to a four year school, next year, perhaps, she will need to know how to do research and integrate material into her papers and cite them, and she won't have done it. She will therefore be getting Cs and worse at that school, when it will cost her many times more than it now does, and may indeed mean that she fails her upper division classes. She shrugged. I guess that means she would have to find out the hard way.