Well, no. As evidenced SSH is a very exposed surface that is commonly brute-force attacked. A VPN is less exposed, less commonly attacked, it offers much more control of authorization (clients, devices, 2fa) and monitoring. And, now your server might not even need a public IP. It is with good reason companies have used this method as standard practice for decades for remote access.

Besides, for many use-cases, SSH is not the only service you need to access remotely.