Kids who don’t have your child’s stats to get huge merit and who don’t have parents who can pay, usually commute from home to the local CC or state school. Most college students in the US do not go away to college.
Seriously, we don’t want a gazillion undergrads borrowing a whole bunch of money only to get first jobs that pay $35k-50k per year. Your child may be headed for a higher paying engineering career, but undergrad loans aren’t based on potential earnings for a particular major. And even a future engineer should not have a bunch of undergrad debt.