As a Californian, I wish we'd overtake Germany in welfare indicators too: free college, great schools, good healthcare, etc.
Community college is very cheap in California, and the quality is extremely high. I know because I went to community college in CA.
93% of Californians have health insurance, which is not perfect, but not as horrible as I often hear people describe it.
Public transportation does really suck though in California.
I have no idea what it is that you are comparing or where you pulled those numbers from. The systems are not the same and we have a lot more than "universities" for higher education, such as Fachhochschulen and Hochschulen.
Overall, statistics says the number is 55% for the share of youth starting higher education in Germany: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/72005/umfrage...
We also have what "Facharbeiter" for most non-higher education professions, which take 2-3.5 years. https://www.bmbf.de/bmbf/en/education/the-german-vocational-...
There is some discussion that there are now too many in the higher education track and too few in the vocational training track. We have too few "Facharbeiter" and "Meister" for a lot of important professions for the practical work.
Personally, having done both tracks - in 1992 I obtained what would now probably be called "mechatronics engineer" after three years of training in a school and a huge chemical fiber plant for the practical on.the-job parts. Afterwards I studied CS and half of business administration. I think almost two thirds of youth every year going to higher education is way too much. Again, we have this vocational training, if there was nothing and Bachelor degrees count both as higher education and are used in place of where Germany uses our vocational training system - again, 2 to 3.5 years! - than it makes sense to get at least a Bachelor. But here in Germany I think we actually could use shifting some of those 55% into the other track.
If you get such a vocational training degree, e.g. "Facharbeiter", you are already pretty well educated and qualified. If you add a "Meister" on top of that after getting some work experience you are on a path to really good earnings and don't have to hide at all from comparisons with top engineering degree holders. Those people would not show up at all in your comparison, because you don't have that system.
I got a fantastic ME education at a German university and I wish the tuition I pay for my kids in the US would go more towards academics and less to all the other overhead.
That very much depends on the subject. In CS I even had classes that took place in the office of the professor because there only were a handful of people. For seminars we went into a hotel in the middle of nowhere for a few days with about a dozen people total.
If on the other hand you study BWL (business administration) during the first year or two it's very crowded in even a large auditorium. That's because that is what all those people end up signing up for who don't really know what they want, and "business" always is the fallback and safe choice for many. The more concrete and STEM-y your field the less of that problem you will ever see.
California has 3 of the world's top-10 colleges according to US News and World Report's questionable ranking. I'll admit CA's K-12 education leaves much to be desired. It's actually a little weird how different college and K-12 are in the state.
Not sure how I should think about homelessness in CA. I think the problem is that the climate attracts homeless people.
CSUs aren't cheap, but if you are only there for two years the damage is limited and grants might take care of it.