Good, I thought it was a really good response. I wouldn't characterize the graduation speech as bullshit or say that the speaker lacked earnestness. However, I do think that it was a product of a specific time in life.

I hope that the speaker goes to a college with a true intellectual environment where people really are passionate about ideas. There is a lot of focus even in many excellent high schools in somehow gaming the system to get to the next level more than embracing the content as interesting. Ideally, students still build their minds as a side effect.

I am not sure how good the growth in number of AP classes is. They personally gave me a couple years of credits that allowed me to skip a lot of remedial prerequisite classes in subjects that interested me. (This was mid-90s and they probably wouldn't translate to as many credits today at most schools.) However, I have heard about the large number of electives in interesting subjects that there used to be, before AP classes crowded them out. I had excellent teachers in small classes in high school, and I think I missed out by taking classes with the more prescriptive curricula that AP classes have. Having a standard test for something other than a trade certification (eg. bar, medical boards, series 7, CFA, etc.) after a certain level seems a bit backward.