Isn't that the core of how universities operate, in the first place?

Sure, you could get an education for cheap from a community college, or free from various online sources, or for the best education possible, get paid to learn on the job. If you attend a university though, you're getting prestige by showing how much of your money, or someone else's money, you can burn through.

It's not like anyone's taking undergraduate classes at Harvard or Stanford because the teaching assistants actually instructing are going to provide above-average instruction. They aren't even concerned with tenured professors teaching performance; they put publishing metrics first.