After a forty year career in Graphic Design, I asked my mom why I wasn’t allowed to take any art classes in high school. She said “Well, you were on a pre-University track, and we didn’t want to deviate from it or have you take any frivolous classes.”
Same in college, I was on Pre-Med School track. Luckily, you can get many jobs in Design without a degree (or with a “frivolous” BS in Bio).
Hey, mom! Remember how you said if I didn’t stop doodling I’d never get anywhere? Well, in your face, I had a great career sketching ideas for clients, drawing comics, and doing detailed illustrations and fine art… DOODLING.
There is another high school in town, serving an area with houses even more absurdly priced than mine, which probably had more people in this program - but I have no real data on that.
Graduated mid-90s. I received absolutely zero career guidance. All I got was a brief meeting with the guidance counselor sometime during 12th grade that was just making sure my college applications were in order. There was no talk about anything after college.
To be fair, I was in a magnet program, had stellar grades, a transcript full of advanced classes, and a good SAT score. It was a communications magnet, I learned TV production, and I was planning to major in communications in college; my path was pretty obvious, so maybe she just didn’t feel like talking about that was going to be productive for either of us.
(ultimately that is actually not the path I ended up taking, but I think that was all for the better overall)