Interesting topic...I think they guy is right urging students to avoid because I think what will happen is...if people actually read things on the news and in blogs and things like that (which they usually don't)...people will see this and the ones who are really motivated and really passionate about the career will stay in it no matter what the circumstances are, then the others who really don't know what in the hell they're doing will change to another career...so I don't think he meant to target EVERY design student out there...but he worded it in such a way that it should make an impact on those who are clueless.
For example, i'm in the states and i'm going to college for a graphic design degree. I don't call myself a great designer by any means because I follow sites such as abduzeedo, psdtuts, faveup, these forums and a ton other design forums and blogs and see so many people out there doing things that I can't even dream of doing right now. The problem is at my college, i'm almost embarassed to say that there are people in my classes that don't even know how to use Photoshop, or aren't even good at computers. Then we have people that say they're good at Photoshop but they're the one's that just Photoshop a picture of themselves for MySpace or whatever. So really they don't have any previous knowledge and they're hoping to get it from college...which is not going to happen the way they expect.
You can even look at some of them and see they don't even have an eye for design, they're good artists, but aren't good designers and that is a big problem.
Anyway, I don't agree with what the guy is saying about the recession killing design jobs, I guess in some fields of design yes but where i'm working right now business is better than ever. Our company has been in business since 2000 and we've sold more websites this January than any January since the company started.
So that part I don't agree with, but I do think a lot of the current design students should move elsewhere because they're going to have issues when they get out especially if they didn't have any experience before going in college.