Improving perceptions of graduate utility is fundamental to Higher Education's employability and skills agenda. However, utility enhancement is a ubiquitous consequence of all learning. Therefore, motivating students to engage in deep learning to improve their utility is problematic. Using the student voice, in this article, I explain how prompts endorsing marginalism as a benefit of attaining superior utility with higher subjective value informed and motivated meta-learning approaches. Drawing on data from an ethnography and interpretive phenomenology situated in the unique learning environment of the COVID-19 pandemic, findings reveal students were motivated to seek utility attainment opportunities that marginally enhanced self-perceptions, transferability of learning, and employability. This article is among the first to explain why the attainment of knowledge and can-do competencies associated with marginalism, superior utility, and higher subjective value, motivates learners' present and future time perspectives.