I agree with what you’re saying, that you now almost need the prep providers content to be able to compete with everyone else (eg. you don’t have schweser, someone else has schweser and had the practice questions for a reading in CFAI that had no questions so now they are better prepared than you). I think this is just the evolution of the CFA program because it’s you versus everyone else writing the exam. Can you do it without a prep provider though? Yes, I have a friend who has passed all three levels, only failed level 2 once and passed first attempt on others, and he only used CFAI text books with no help from prep providers. So you can do it, but having extra help from the prep provider does seem to be more and more necessary to keep pace with other people. I failed level 2 band 8 last year using schweser and this year I’m trying Elan, I’m interested to see the differences between the two providers and see which one I think has the best content
Maybe OP also wants to say that other candidates “cheated” because they used third party providers and didn’t consider LOS as the sole basis for passing the exam?
On AF, We got a bunch of people who fail using schweser and claim 3rd party materials are not enough. Now we got people who fail with CFA materials who claim 3rd party materials are needed.
People always looking to justify and assign their failures to anything else except themselves.