You are quite right, of course.
I was responding to the OP's complaint of a lack of blacks -- you can always get a deep black.
A simple complaint can have a complex cause or a very simple cause - I tend to suspect simple causes first, only when they are ruled out is it time to look deeper. Without more information in this case it is hard to pinpoint what is happening.
I am guessing at what may be going wrong as I haven't had a look at the negative and work prints. I would normally respond to a lack of blacks as a printing issue, though a very low contrast negative can also be the problem - but then the negative should look quite wrong, and I would expect this to be the primary complaint.
With VC paper there isn't any reason not be able to produce a print that goes from black to white (assuming you want to). Sometimes one gets lost in the highlights and looses track of the other end of the tonal scale, and an excercise of 'turn it on its head and see what happens' can bring things back to reality and show what to do in the shadows.
The other obvious reason for lack of black is there is no way to get to black given the grade of paper that optimizes the highlight/midtone contrast. The answer then is to burn in the shadows.
Once the general scheme of things has been settled - paper contrast, dodging/burning, rough paper exposure - then the final exposure determination should be based on highlights, as you have stated.