Knowledge has a series of dependencies. You can't really do quantum mechanics w/o calculus and other higher math, and you can't do higher math w/o algebra, and so on. The problem is that uploading, and validating these dependencies can take many years. In theory conventional education is like the Linux Standard Base, a set of common packages which minimize the amount of dependencies that have to be loaded. Thus, in theory, a high school graduate should be able to handle most forms of non specialized knowledge. College majors and prerequisites are similar in this regard.
Autodidacts are like folks who load every program they use without a package manager. A difficult task which not everybody can do. Also such systems are prone to crashes (massive holes in experience/training)
The problem w/ much of mainstream education is that the 'IT department' is doing things by rote and doesn't really understand packages.
What would be interesting is an educational overlay on wikipedia or the equivalent which would explicitly identify and specify these dependencies.