The way it's worded, no public school can be a top-tier school, and since he says the value of "top tier" is the (four or more years ago) application process, there's a certain logic to that. A HS student in Texas will have a much easier time getting into UT than Stanford.
However, my experience (as a holder of a degree from a further-down-the-list university) has been that after the first job (and then even moreso after the second), the name of your undergrad university matters much less. Having real, productive work experience is itself a powerful signal—so hopefully those first jobs let you do interesting or varied enough stuff to have something good for the resume. So I don't have the network (yet!) that a Stanford or MIT grad would, but I'm not landing on discard piles either.
Funny in my part of the world, the bad ones are the private universities.
The reason being the only people that go to private universities are the ones without good notes to earn a place at the public universities, but whose parents are rich enough to pay for the university.
People with degrees from private universities are told they bought the degree.
I don't mean that everyone that goes to private universities here has bought his or her degree, but there are a few cases of famous people that went to Bocconi and well... let's say they don't need to make use of their degree. I don't know if you can read italian but this article (http://www.lettera43.it/persone/8320/il-lato-b-della-bocconi...) explains how many of the girls involved in the Berlusconi's scandal went to Bocconi and got one or even two degrees. That means either that the place is unusually full or very smart and very pretty girls or that there's something strange going on.
However, my experience (as a holder of a degree from a further-down-the-list university) has been that after the first job (and then even moreso after the second), the name of your undergrad university matters much less. Having real, productive work experience is itself a powerful signal—so hopefully those first jobs let you do interesting or varied enough stuff to have something good for the resume. So I don't have the network (yet!) that a Stanford or MIT grad would, but I'm not landing on discard piles either.