This paper addresses the challenge of developing a conceptual framing for the meaning of value with respect to higher education. The author argues that criteria derived from analyses of the life histories of longstanding graduates, which often take the form of counternarratives and proceed from that which matters to them, can inform an evaluative lens that does more than critique alone. Three attributes of life history -- retrospection, inclusion of protracted trajectories and experiential knowledges -- support enriched and heterogeneous meanings of value and provide an empirically defensible alternative to dominant and reductive economic, specifically financialised, framings that commodify and marketise higher education.