There is no reason to apply economics to education. "Value" is not only monetary. Your post is a prime example of someone who has absorbed the system to an extent that it becomes the very backdrop against which to analyze everything else.
It's a lot harder to deal with, but it isn't somehow excluded from the purview of economics.
It's probably even necessary to make economic considerations when it comes to education. Given limited resources, choosing to put them towards things that return more value probably makes sense.
You should really try to see this from a non-monetary, non-utilitarian perspective.
For example, if your desired outcome is self discovery, some education based on indoctrination probably isn't going to work very well. That's a silly example, but choosing between methods and selecting the one that best delivers the result you desire isn't real distinguishable from making an economic choice.
I don't know how to make you stop thinking in a utilitarian way. There are other philosophies, you know?
I responded to the juxtoposition here: There is no reason to apply economics to education. "Value" is not only monetary.
I'm not insisting that you view education through the lens of economics, I was pointing out that what you said about value was not an argument against economics (because economics doesn't care about what form value takes).
You keep looking for a word other than value to describe this thing that you think should happen because then I can't point out that you can analyze it economically, but this is not a way to argue that education should not be analyzed economically, it is a misunderstanding of economics (it was really clear when stated as "Value" is not only monetary, but "we should do it just because" is still an imputation of value...).