I don't think he meant it that way. Its no secret that pretty much all the top airline jobs either require a degree, or even if they don't they heavily, heavily prefer one. So when an airline hires a lot more in that category than all the others, it can be (trigger warning!) described as bottom of the barrel simply as an expression in the same way that an airline hiring a "tier two or three" candidate (even with a degree and no DUI, etc) would be called that as well.

Heck for that matter, when airlines who had the asinine 20/20 vision requirement finally got rid of it, I'm sure that expression was used as well.

There's some really good pilots with no degree or who have had a DUI and have a lot to offer. But every airline has their "tiers" and a degree is vital to most at the moment, regardless of the morality of that or of the stellar exceptions out there that haven't been hired but probably should be.'