Yes, and no. They could get aspects of it.
A person with such a plan could become widely read and well-informed about the literature they study, yes. But there are important aspects of higher education they would miss.
For one thing, there's an "invisible" aspect to the proposition; who selects the reading list? Who selects the commentaries? What's the basis for selection? I often notice this about non-traditional students, who are self-educated and then arrived in a college class later in life. They often have quite a lot of existing knowledge, and also a lot of motivation and enthusiasm, all of which are very positive and admirable things. But there's also a complete black hole about some basic thing that just wasn't on their radar, or they might have a rather bizarre attachment to some fringe notion they ran across that distorts their ability to follow more fundamental aspects of the field (history, in my case).
Another thing is that people who set out to do this kind of thing often don't follow through, and there's a reason why not. On any topic of any complexity, there is already likely to be an ongoing conversation among experts in the field - often a debate - about it. Because that conversation has been ongoing for some time at a high level of sophistication, it can be very difficult for a newcomer to follow what's going on (like two die-hard American football fans arguing who the greatest quarterback was, in the presence of a foreigner who has never even seen an American football game). In the absence of a guide to orient you, getting up to speed with the conversation so that you can say you're actually informed about the state of the field takes a LOT more time and effort, and is often frustrating.
A third thing is that a traditional college education creates (or should) a learning community and cross-pollination. A broad and varied curriculum means your English major isn't only taking English classes, but also psychology or astronomy or whatever. Something they learned in astronomy class can prompt insights when reading Shakespeare that they would never have thought of otherwise. Not only that, but hopefully they have other students as friends and there's a certain amount of dining-hall conversation. I'm not going to be naive and assume students are all talking about their classes over lunch, but I will say an AWFUL lot of what I learned in college was not in the classroom but at a dining hall table with philosophy or physics or engineering majors, who were coming to the conversation with ideas and methods they had picked up in THEIR array of classes. Someone studying solo with a stack of books and the internet won't get that.
The fourth thing is something I tell my students all the time, particularly in general education classes where some are tempted to think it's "irrelevant." There are always two things you're learning in any class; the content of the class, AND the skills you need in order to master that content. It's often the skills that are more valuable in life, in a direct sense. For instance, at my institution, we build general education around four "habits of mind." These are qualities that any higher educational experience ought to cultivate, but we built the program to be more explicit about it. The Habits are Purposeful Communication, Problem Solving, Integrated Perspective and Self-Directed Learning. So, your prospective self-educating person with the stack of books is likely to develop very strong Self-Directed Learning habits, since the whole program is self-directed. But they may have little opportunity to translate the information they're taking in into communication skills, written or oral, from needing how to communicate with others about that content in a disciplined and sophisticated way. They may, as I suggested above, have less exposure to the Integrated Perspective habit. And so on.
Don't get me wrong; personal initiative to learn and educate oneself is an amazing and wonderful thing. I wish more of my students had it, and more people in society at large. People SHOULD be always seeking to learn and develop their understanding more. But for most people, it's somewhere in the difficult-to-impossible range for that kind of undertaking to accomplish what a university experience does.
As far as the funding issue goes, this is not mysterious hidden information. The BIG report on it all (on a state-by-state basis) is
here. If you look at p. 43 of the report linked, Georgia is somewhat above average in its appropriations for public higher ed: 14th out of the 50 states + DC. Looks to be about $12k or $13k per FTE (Full-Time Equivalent student). By the way, that chart shows you what I'm talking about for my own state, NH: dead last, at $4629/FTE.
As far as Georgia Tech goes, its financials are [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]. For 2022, state appropriations were 16% of their revenue (compare that to the 9% I mentioned for my own school, Plymouth State. My colleagues would give a kidney for our state to support 16% of our budget). There's also a big category (38%) of "sponsored operations," which mostly means grants, and the grant revenue will include federal and state grants as well as private foundations and donors. The difference is that appropriations are just funds the state sends to operate the school; grants are awarded for specific periods of time, to achieve specific tasks (things like research, etc.), so while they do keep the school solvent, they're more tied to specific activities or outcomes. (By the way, before I noticed you were talking about GA Tech, I looked at U of Georgia, which is strikingly different in its revenue structure; 28% from the state and only 20% in grants, unless I'm misreading their statement. For whatever that's worth).
One thing that I would hypothesize about all this is a certain cultural component - specifically, athletics. I'm not sure that GA and NH are actually all that different in their political mix (which I won't go into, obviously), though they're very different in size and history and demographics and all. But Georgia schools have powerhouse athletic programs that rev up enormous enthusiasm and loyalty. NH schools just can't compete on that level (who knows or cares whom UNH has a sports rivalry with?). I suspect that doesn't just translate into direct revenue to the school (I think I've heard those championship programs run at a net financial loss). It probably also means that there's a lot more willingness to support those schools publicly, or conversely a lot more hesitation to be the one to propose cutting their support.
