You don't even need a degree to be a bridge engineer if you know what you are doing and can prove you know what you are doing. It's just harder to prove without a degree is all.
this is true to a certain extent, although in Canada to be a professional engineer you need to have an engineering undergrad degree and a certification through the government proving you can be a professional engineer
I don't know how loving handicapped the system is in the US where literally anyone can be an engineer and build safety critical infrastructure with no credentials whatsoever but if that's what you're describing it's pretty weird.
Also. yes you can self teach yourself a lot of things, but lets be real from an employers perspective: Unless you are the cream of the crop top 1% and have 40 years of experience under your belt, how can he prove you are what you say you are unless you have a degree? Like every loving person that drops out of highschool/university these days are MASSIVELY loving lazy and always have exactly your mentality of "I can learn anything, bill gates was a college dropout amirite?". Yet none of you even have a shred of will to learn ANYTHING on your own. It takes extraordinary discipline to learn the entirety of a college degree on your own, and I think your loving full of stuff when you say most people could do it therefore college is a scam.