I'm not from the USA either, and while I remember counsellors proposing community college/trades, the societal view was that you would be doomed to work in a mediocre job with mediocre pay for life with that kind of education. Worse, if you didn't attend post-secondary education at all, you'd be lucky if McDonalds would hire you to flip burgers. Only those with university educations were going to make anything of themselves.

In hindsight it was pretty ridiculous that anyone actually spread that message, having no basis in reality, but when you are not even/barely a legal adult and have spent the vast majority of your life in school, it is difficult to see what the real world is actually has in store.