As for getting in-depth information on topics, you don't need a university for that anymore. Library Genesis and sci-hub has more in-depth information on topics than you could ever possibly absorb, assuming it's legal in your country. What universities uniquely offer is community, financial support, and research: without universities, sci-hub would be a pretty empty place.
As for computer architecture, OSU is not heavily into computer architecture. It's much more focused on custom accelerators and ASICs as well as semiconductor research. And it is recognized as one of the best ECE programs in the world with one of the main problems with it being that the CS department is comparatively weak.
My graduating class, in a December, was still over 1,000 engineers. Spring graduation typically had 2.5-3.5K/yr.
I'd make a stronger statement than "You're not going to learn electrical and computer engineering by reading stuff on Sci-Hub." You aren't going to learn by reading. You have to actually do stuff in order to construct the knowledge inside your own mind, and as you say, that's hard. But the information is available, even if it isn't academically published; in electrical engineering, in addition to sci-hub stuff, you have Bob Pease columns, appnotes (especially the ones from Analog and Linear), The Art of Electronics, EEVblog, allaboutcircuits, Hackaday, Marco Reps, Camenzind's book, Jeri Ellsworth's Short Circuits, Don Lancaster's website, Forrest Mims's books, patents, Adafruit, etc. LTSpice is proprietary but gratis, while QUCS, ngSpice, and WR-SPICE are free software, and now you can get stuff mostly automatically fabbed by JLCPCB for ridiculously low prices. And with the rise of iceSTORM it's becoming practical to design gateware without signing a support contract with Xilinx. Just like the undergraduate EECE curriculum, a lot of this stuff is aimed at beginners (you can learn a lot by fiddling with Falstad's circuit.js even if it doesn't do Monte Carlo simulation), so it doesn't go very deep, but some of it is very much not.
(Still, there is a lot of information that isn't publicly available at all, because it's a trade secret of TSMC or Lam Research or Intel. But the professors aren't walking undergraduates through that stuff either.)
The huge thing about custom accelerators and ASICs and semiconductor research, though, is that you can't really do it in your basement. MPW/shuttle programs like MOSIS and CMP go a long way to making chip design accessible, but it's going to be tough to even run DRCs on your designs without proprietary software, and then it still costs you US$10k to get back 10 chips that don't work. Going to a university for EECE, even for undergrad, might give you the chance to go through that painful cycle enough times to actually get something working, and the mentorship you need to find out what you don't know.
There were 1800 engineers in my graduating class (1995).
IU is a great liberal arts school - but doesn't compete in engineering by design.
One night while struggling with a problem for work I took a walk and wandered by where I calculated the IBM 650 must have been located back in the day, hoping for some kind of inspiration, or something. It was a good distraction but it did not work at all.
Took a violin course; the teacher, one on one, was FAR too good for what I needed and later played the Brahms concerto in Toronto! According to the rules, at the end had to play for the violin faculty, including the former concert master of the Cleveland Symphony -- poor guy! Eventually I made it through much of the Bach E Major Partita and the Chaconne! Great fun! Met my wife.
The math department had some good mathematicians. The weekly seminar flew in some of the best mathematicians in the world. Later where I got my Ph.D., at a much more famous school, the seminars were nowhere near as good.
As a grad student, since I was teaching ugrad courses, I got paid, enough actually to live nicely, e.g., eat all my meals in restaurants, and save some money!
But I didn't fit into their program: (1) My first semester they put me in their abstract algebra course. Okay: I'd done well in a similar course in ugrad school, and my ugrad honors paper was on group representations. So that I wouldn't have to waste time in the course, the prof and I had an unspoken agreement: At the end he gave me a little oral exam in his office -- I went through some Galois theory! (2) They put me in a topology course, from the famous book by Kelley. In the first class, the prof said that the homework was to work all the exercises! HA! Some of the exercises were notoriously difficult! I wondered if HE could work all the exercises! Besides, in ugrad school I'd taken a reading course from that book -- once a week gave a lecture to a prof, chapter by chapter, one week on the theorems and the next week on the exercises. For the material on Moore-Smith convergence, a second prof showed up -- maybe he wanted to learn some about that topic! I wrote out solutions to about 1/3rd of the exercises (to be honest not the same ~1/3rd I'd done in ugrad), turned them in at the end, and did show for the final exam. (3) They put me in a real analysis course. On the first test, with just one exercise, in set theory, the prof wanted to "see me after class". He had marked my test paper as wrong. Gee, I doubt that many students got that exercise. Since the previous summer I'd had a course in axiomatic set theory, the test was easy for me. When I explained to the prof that my notation, I didn't have time on the test to define, was standard, he saw that (A) my solution was correct and (B), as we both noticed and he confessed, was one step shorter than his. I didn't know that prof, had never had any interaction with him, but concluded he was for whatever reason on my case. My victory over him on that test was enough for me -- I never saw him again. No biggie loss: The book he was using was awful, e.g., was just some typed notes -- Royden, one of the best math texts ever, was MUCH better!
So, net, I did my teaching, used some of the money I was getting, more than I needed, to have fun while saving some money, did my teaching, met my wife, and started violin -- I liked it!
Since that was Indiana, that is, out in the Midwest flat farming country, a lot of the other grad math students were pretty good athletes. So one afternoon I showed up at the volley ball game those students held. Soon I was very much not wanted! I was the last to be chosen! And soon even the other team would make sure I never got to touch the ball! Those guys took athletics VERY seriously, much more seriously than the math!
But in the ugrad teaching, nearly all the girls tried hard to look pretty and be sweet! One course I taught was some math for elementary education majors. There were maybe 30 students in the class. There was one boy there, maybe looking to meet the girls! So, all the rest were girls. And they had their career direction decided, no doubt, high determination -- they'd get a teaching certificate, a husband, a home, and some babies. NO DOUBT! And they were just AWFUL at that math, and soon just terrified of it! Due to the influence of computing, I had to teach them about base 2 and base 16 -- that was more painful for them than having their teeth pulled! I also taught calculus, trigonometry, etc., and in those courses the girls did fine, no angst! So, there was something about elementary education majors!!!
The problem was the author of the book had no idea why they were doing this, or what the purpose of this was. It provided the curriculum, but had already lost the inherent reason behind it.
When was this? Nowadays the grad students are constantly complaining that they don't get paid enough to live and mandatory fees are too high.
The money: I lived with low rent, in a dorm that had the option of no meals in a university cafeteria. Since I was teaching, I paid no tuition and, as I remember, paid no fees. My teaching was a bargain for the university, i.e., I was no doubt MUCH cheaper per course taught than a prof. They had me teaching a wide variety of courses and, one semester, two courses. That wasn't fair to me, but I didn't mind.
It was an old dorm, REALLY nice. And it was next to the music school and, still, not far from the math department or lots of places to eat.