Huh. Usually I've heard "state schools" to mean schools a tier lower than the UC schools. Like San Jose State would be a state school - both the prestige and the tuition are rather lower, though than a UC school like UCLA, or UC Berkeley, even though all are run by the same state.
Oh right, I see what you mean. It's possible I'm using the term wrongly. Maybe "public universities" is a better word? Basically I meant the "flagship" 4-year universities run by the states, of which each state typically has at least one or two (UT and A&M in Texas, Purdue and IU in Indiana, etc). Those used to be a common route to cheap but highly regarded education, because many are huge (e.g. Michigan State has 47,000 undergrads, Texas has 38,000), and they used to have only nominal tuition, plus enough work/study programs for students to pay their own room & board by working on campus. They're still cheaper, but no longer like that.
California does still seem to have one interesting option, at least for engineering: from what I can tell, Cal Poly SLO is formally a Cal State, and priced like a Cal State, but sort of a "premium" Cal State whose degrees are well-recognized among engineering firms.
Hm. Perhaps this is a California thing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California