It felt like I was defending my MS degree thesis and scrutinized by four of my mentors/professors and the chairman to comment on this...

I've had tenants that are tenured university professors and make a good living. 

My friends are generally a low- or middle-income crowd: many of them are artists (for instance, they're professors and practitioners of art), or they work for non-profits, or they're school teachers, etc.

@Danny Webber I think this professor is looking at this either with no vision, or discounting what mitigation efforts are in place.

These days they can't believe how well I am doing.Father in law was very conservative and a retired professor from a highly regarded college.He believed  a J-O-B had stability etc.