20,000 students would sign a letter opposing mandatory science classes.
When I was at University we had to take a mandatory freshman writing course (we had to write what were essentially useless papers of no consequence, graded by a graduate student, we just had to show that we could write papers and present coherent arguments and conclusions, it almost didn’t matter the topic), and we also had to take a math and English class if we couldn’t pass the tests to get out of them. I did pass the tests, but a lot of the students didn’t and resented that they had to take those classes. Plus we had at least one mandatory 101 science class (chemistry, geology, physics student’s choice).
Couldn’t imagine professors protesting teaching.
At the major universities, the professors do research and pull in grant money; the grad students do the teaching.
Until the so-called Free Speech movement came along in the nineteen sixties and cowed a cowardly head of the University of California, it demanded all students take a year of American history and a year of Western Civilization. The courses were given by fantastic professors. In the end both the students and America were the big losers.