Whoa, what? I don't think this comment meant anything negative to people from blue-collar backgrounds, and I think when it reads "deserve to be there" that--you might be reading that as "don't deserve anything better than that", but I think the context implied that what was meant was "shouldn't feel like you're a fraud at box-lifting and thus don't deserve to be doing the work you're doing". My family's blue-collar AF, but I don't think there's anything offensive about noting that a field that widely requires college degrees (these days) is going to be populated largely by the classes of people who get college degrees (for whatever reasons such class divisions exist). "Wealthier" doesn't even necessarily mean anything above middle class, in context.