I don't accept his premise.
He is worried about non-science majors missing out on introductory level science courses, and science and engineering students missing out on introductory level humanities courses. How many non-science majors are likely to have taken AP Science courses? How many science and engineering majors are likely to have taken AP humanities courses? Sure, I suppose there are a few, but I think that people mostly take AP courses in their area of focus. I don't remember anybody, even the most gung-ho students, taking all of the available AP courses when I was in school -- and there weren't as many then as they offer today.
In my junior year of high school I decided I wanted to be a novelist, and I'd work as a high school English teacher as my day job. And here are the AP classes I enrolled in for my junior and senior years:
- Trig/Pre-calc
- Calculus
- Chemistry
- Physics
- US History
- European History
- Government
- English
Looks pretty balanced between the humanities and STEM courses to me. And eventually all my plans went to crap, and I ended up in a STEM field after all.
