Ah yes, the memories of those times, manipulating Quark and Pagemaker files to get them through the Brisque, especially the ones with colorized tiffs, tiffs with clipping paths, spot to spot blends and fonts styled as bold or italic within the app, and the joys of APR/OPIWe remember - In 1999 roughly 80% of the artwork arriving in Prepress could NOT be printed as supplied.
I kid you not. Today roughly 20% has a 'fatal error'.
I do not believe this is due to an improvement in the 'Designer Education'.
Most likely due to the sophistication of the available software tools.
YMMV