The author probably means that it makes a lot of sense of offer people who don't want to go to uni a better perspective than working tough manual labour or minimum wage service industry jobs for the rest of their life. Not every degree currently taught at university is really necessary to perform well in the jobs that those graduates normally get. America would do well to re-evalute the necessity of degrees when vocational training can produce equally skilled workers at a much lower cost for the economy as a whole.