I know of a graduate-level software engineering course at a reputable US university, where getting kicked out of the project group is a possibility and gets the person an automatic F grade.

In most b-school group projects, the work is fairly easy enough such that the headache of kicking someone is out is probably greater than just doing the work amongst the remaining members.

This is exactly it.

In order, from most painful to least, in my story:

- Kicking Bob out of the group

- Getting Bob to do a fair share of the work

- Getting Bob to do ANY work

- Having Bob do no work and have everyone else share the load

This was highly discouraged as the whole point of the group projects was to teach how to deal with group dynamics.

Isn't a part of dealing with group dynamics though recognizing when there is harm in/to the group and removing it? (sorry)

If the whole point was to teach how to deal with group dynamics, then kicking Bob out should have been rewarded with an automatic 100% Grade.

But since you mentioned "tasks", I assume there was actual work beyond chatting up your teammates. So your description is inaccurate.

Whenever a lecturer responded to a student's complaint about other group members doing no work by saying something like "I don't care, work it out amongst yourselves, in the real world you have to be able to work in groups", I would think to myself "in the real world, people who refuse to do work get fired".