We might as well get rid of school guidance counselors, then, if all relevant info is online for students to find on their own. Would save the public schools a few dollars.
No, I wouldn't advocate this measure.
My high school served around 1,000 students while I was there. The school had around five or six standard guidance counselors, and each one was charged with a certain amount of students based on alphabetical order of surnames. These counselors had a lot of very basic information and training. Mine helped me cope with my parents' divorce. This is the upside to counselors.
The problem was that these counselors, on account of their basic training, really did not have a lot of specific information. They were trained to help students with personal problems and to give them very basic information on what scholarships are and on how to apply to colleges. I asked my counselor about admission requirements to a local university, and her response was to Google it. Some of my friends had a different counselor, and she gave them misinformation.
I suspect this is the same for most high school counselors, not only due to my experience and the OP, but because a lot of my friends whom I did not meet in high school had similar experiences. My counselor at my university is not much help either beyond the basics. Students are left to take responsibility for their own futures by showing initiative by contacting the actual people who can help them, whether these people are at a career fair or whether these people are across an ocean at another university's graduate or post-graduate admissions office.
High school guidance counselors can be very helpful in helping students solve or cope with personal problems. I just wouldn't trust them to be experts at scholarships and admissions - at least public schools. And it really isn't that difficult to e-mail admissions at the college you are thinking about attending.
I realize that it sounds as though I am being harsh on high school students. I think that is the unfortunate result of a socio-political climate - perhaps in reaction to the self-centered and emotionally absent parenting style of the Baby Boomers (e.g. Hippies, Vietnam veterans with PTSD) - in which minors are often supervised and protected to a fault, whether through completing some of a child's responsibilities for them, insisting they have a limited capacity for exercising their rational autonomy when it comes to certain responsibilities (e.g. "High school upperclassmen cannot handle applying for a scholarship or for college," sounds like a put-down and a misinformed remark) or telling a minor that their legitimate failure to take responsibility was mostly the fault of some other party.
I think that upperclassmen, when they want something, can get it done, though they may stumble. My parents had faith that I could use my head, and they refused to help me with anything unless I truly, deeply needed it. I had to make a case, and I had to show that I tried to the very best of my ability first. Everything turned out fine, and I was made a better person on account of having those responsibilities and expectations placed on me. High school students are not that stupid, and it doesn't serve them well to tell them that they need help when they actually do not. That contributes to learned helplessness.
I once trusted my guidance counselors on factual things, and they let me down. It was a hard life lesson that even authority figures can be unreliable, and it was a hard life lesson that when you want something, you often have to learn to be resourceful and to take as much responsibility for getting it as possible, because when you are an adult, most times no one will hold your hand and help you. Hard lessons make people, and I appreciate them.