I hadn't seen the health complication until I read through some of your other comments from the last few days. I think it makes you an exception though and not definitive of the state of education...
tl;dr: The numbers don't line up to suggest college is unavailable to kids whose parents won't pay.
It's going to mean loans. Even with 9 months of a really generously compensated internship (to Midwest standards, at least, I grew up in WI and went to school in MI), I still left college with north of 50k in loans.
Ohio University, cost is ~24k a year, more than 12k of which is room, board, transportation and personal. Ohio State this year is 21k, more than half of which is the room and board. For both, tuition and books is about 11-11.5k.
You'd hypothetically already be paying the rest with the 7k / year job that's keeping you kicking.
4.5k in the stafford loan means, 6k in other loans a year to fill it in at today's cost, which is probably 20-40% higher than it was 5 years ago.
4 years of loans, even if they're shitty, "credit ready" loans at personal loan rates, still only leaves a fictional Ohio traditional student with $45k in student loan debt at the end of the degree. $60 if they take a victory lap.
In any STEM discipline, paid internships and co-ops are also possible, which would further reduce the loan load required.
So in summary, funding an education is not impossible. Yes, the student will be paying for it for a while. I'm still paying on my loans and I still will be for a few years. But I'm sorry, not having parents foot the bill generally isn't yet a barrier to a high-quality education.