Readit NewsAnd probably openstax.org is enough anyway, in terms of books. They do a better job for free that most publishers with lots of recommendations that charge hundreds. Then you have a lot of exercises provided by some american colleges that I assume will also be enough.
Of course there are new models coming out every month. It's feeling like the 90s when you could just wait a year and your computer got twice as fast. Now you can wait a year and whatever problem you have will be better solved by a generally capable AI.
But even after the money consideration... you still have all the "lost credibility" in the system, because the institutions are not properly funded, and also because science is very dependent on grants,politics, and stupid criteria + nepotism and corruption inside the institutions, etc. That goes beyond PhD applications to even "who can sell the coffee in campus". On PhD apps, I will never forget when one of my housemate just said to me that he would leave the country because one teacher said to him in advance that he would not enter on PhD, because everything was bought out.
I think this is only the ""beginning"" of at least 10+ years of colleges having a hard time/ losing credibility year after year (sometimes because they are failing, and other times because they dare to have opinions different than people like Musk, which is not fair for academia). Either way, should I feel sorry for them? For the institutions, sure. But for the people who rule the institutions right now? My only fear is that they will be substituted by even worse individuals.