If the instruction is substantially differentiated between the two, the transition from CC may also depend upon his intended engineering major. I went full four years of engineering at a highly ranked engineering school. Freshman year there was the classic intro engineering lecture where the prof said “look left, now look right,…one of you won’t be here in the end”. Basically, the first two years of engineering were the weed-out years. Those were struggles for me, but when it finally transitioned to upperclass electives in my selected field beginning junior year I shined. I loved those upperclass electives and the grades reflected my interest. In certain respective fields, you need the basic intros but some may find they don’t need all the advanced “foundational” courses. Maybe not all the advanced math, or the advanced chemistry, or the advanced physics. Really depends upon the major I think. Anyways, one of my fellow engineering friends was a CC transfer. He saved a lot of money. He saved his sanity from the cut-throat weed-out years. AND importantly, he saved his graduating GPA, because he was the top of the class at his CC so his GPA wasn’t impacted by the weed-out curving. I’d say he was probably average caliber among the University engineering class, so he may not have even survived the weed-out years. I had several friends who were the top of their high school classes, but got blown out by the weed-out engineering classes and either had to change majors or transfer schools (and they didn’t transfer into engineering). Here’s the irony - those guys were indeed smarter than the average University student, but their GPAs got hit so hard that they couldn’t change into some majors that would have easily accepted them directly from high school; and where I believe they would have been among the top students in those majors.
Things might have changed in the last 40 years, but that was my observation on the benefits of CC transferring.