What Makes Higher Education "Higher?" by Daniel N. Robinson

Another piece in Public Discourse.

If the term “higher education” is to be distinguished from other forms of learning or training, surely the distinguishing feature cannot simply be the number of years students have devoted to the cultivation of one or another specific ability. Were that the case, the longer one worked at the grinding wheel or in the paint shop, the higher would one’s education be. No, what the term refers to is the study of things that are themselves higher; higher in the order of abstraction, higher in that plane of thought and of action on which the examined life is lived. Understood in these terms, higher education found itself a century and a half ago on a collision course with what the general public was equally pleased to call “the real world,” the world of commerce, careers and popular estimations of success.

How long has the term "higher education" been used to refer to university (or college) education? And what did it originally mean? The same as "advanced" education or learning? I agree with the substance of Mr. Robinson's essay, on the purpose of a university education. I just wonder if this minor historical/semantic point is correct. If it is not, is it sufficient to discredit his arguments?