Thanks for your well written article. I agree with your analysis and historical timeline up until the point in the Source section when you write about people who lack college education are "at a significant disadvantage".
This may well be true if the job searcher is looking to work at a traditional firm, however, this is changing providing the job seeker has an edge skill.
For example, if s/he is adept at cryptography / cybersecurity it won't be difficult to obtain well paid gigs.
I could be wrong but I think it is more important than ever to identify your talents and intrinsic motivation at an early age. This means better high school guidance counselors, more nuanced psychological testing, using big data to create benchmarks for success in achieving competency within career domains and more effective career mentoring.
Think of it this way, elite athletes are selected and groomed from a very early age in tennis, swimming and other money sports. We need to do the same thing in vocational fields and this does NOT always entail expensive schooling regimes. We can use MOOCs and Y combinator programs to help identify and nurture the rich talent.
Finally, the high schools are going to have to revamp their student assessment paradigms to include a variety of new parameters such as team skills, manual dexterity, creative imagination and measurements of intrinsic motivation to help adolescents plan more effectively for their career futures. If we have these scorecards to hand industry will compete to recruit top talent.