Miguel Maeda, 42, who has a master’s degree and works in public health, was the first in his family to go to college, which has allowed him to achieve a sense of financial stability his parents and grandparents never did. “The fact that they never got to where they wanted to be financially was a very big engine for me to get an education,” Maeda told me.

Maeda thinks that college education is particularly necessary given the highly competitive nature of many fields. “I can tell you that even with a master’s degree the job market is very hard, because companies are looking for master’s and above.”

Still, Maeda said, whether or not you need college depends on your field. “I don’t think that everybody needs a college degree, because we need people going into technical fields as well, because otherwise, who’s going to fix A/C units, who’s going to fix cars? But I would say that the more education you have, the better off you are.”

While some, like Maeda, emphasized the value of the credential rather than the education itself, others still see college as a way to gain new perspectives and life experiences. Daisy Martinez, currently a college sophomore in Texas studying history and theater, values her college education for giving her “diverse experiences I never would have had otherwise.”

Sixty-year-old Will Fendley, who had a successful career in the military and never earned a college degree, thinks “personal drive” is far more important than just going to college. “A lot of people have a college degree and still don’t know what they want to do,” Fendley said. “If someone wants to better themselves and has a reason for bettering themselves, whether it be taking care of themselves or a family member, that person is going to work harder, and apply themselves more to get ahead.”

To Fendley, this sense of drive and purpose, as well as an effective high-school education, and basic life skills, like balancing a checkbook, are the necessary ingredients for a successful life in America.

Those with right-leaning political beliefs were the most likely to think college unnecessary. When it came to income, the middle classes did not think college was necessary, while the poorest and the wealthiest respondents still thought it did. Results to this question also varied according to race: 60 percent of Hispanics still think college is necessary; compared with 51 percent of blacks and 44 percent of whites.

Like views on education, attitudes about homeownership, too, skewed towards pessimism. A majority of those polled believe that homeowners have taken on too much debt, and now cannot afford to pay their mortgages, leading to foreclosures and instability in their communities. That may be why most respondents felt negatively about purchasing a home, despite the fact they considered it an achievable goal.