>>>However, when I, a professor, say this, I'm accused of wanting a "class structure" because I don't think everyone is college material, and I do think we let FAR too many people into colleges to get meaningless degrees, when in fact they should go into the world of work." <<<
Here's something for your class, Professor. Ask them who saves more lives, Doctors or Garbagemen?
The answer is Garbagemen (along with sewer workers and the engineers and construction workers who build and maintain them). Without modern sanitation, Doctors could in no way keep up with all of the diseases that would be spread, including Cholera, Dysentery etc. The vast improvement in lifespan can be traced in history not to the rise of scientific medicine and germ theory, but to modern sanitation.