Perhaps it can, but the challenge then is to identify what's different about the professor's statement from a statement like "It's raining". Why doesn't the first have a definite truth value, but the second does? (What the professor himself believes is not relevant to the actual truth of his statement.)

You might be interested in verificationism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/#EmpVer... (apologies if you know about it already).