Bringing money into the contract - for higher education - very much changed that perception and the expectations that students had for it.
Yes. However, when it was like that, college was pretty much the domain of the wealthy. If your family was already wealthy, there was really no need for college to provide skills for a job.
In addition, when it was like that, the assumption was that high school would provide the needed job skills, and there was also a very robust apprenticeship system. A person with a high school degree could support a family and own a home.
Theology and medicine were basically the only careers other than academia that required college. Even for law, you could apprentice under a lawyer and sit for the boards without law school.
Once college became a universal expectation and was supported by taxes (via government backed loans, GI Bill, etc), it became far more oriented to a jobs ladder.
Education was never about this and I don't know where that myth came from.
The first schools were created to train government bureaucrats and clergy. Then came military officers, medical doctors, and lawyers.
At no point in human history has education been about "finding yourself" it's been about training to enter the workforce-- from Plato's Academy (politicians and military leaders) to the University of Bologna (lawyers) to Harvard (clergy) to American GIs using the GI Bill to get vocational training after WWII it's always been about jobs.