I think you really need to break things down into three areas:
- Design skills - art, technical problem solving, scientific inquiry, etc.
- Consulting skills - how to frame a problem, how to talk to someone and determine what is important, build a professional relationship etc.
- Basic business skills - how to set rates. Taxes, expenses, accounting, estimating, understanding that as a freelancer you’ll spend 30+% of your time rustling up work and not billing, etc. In your example, you mention 12 presentation-worthy illustrations for $200. That’s like 1 to 3 hours of work max. Don’t even get kids in the habit of thinking that kind of money is acceptable for a trained professional.