I'm confused by this. Why are you happier to fund someone's education if their goals are better job placement and personal salary than if their goals are to be better, happier people? In either case, you'd be subsidizing someone else's attempt at bettering their own life -- but why is improving their income tax bracket more valuable to you than improving their wellbeing by any other metric that person might choose?

In a hypothetical scenario where you were given the choice of funding Alice's education with the certain knowledge that her degree would get her a high paying job where she'd be miserable, funding Bob's education with the knowledge that his life and relationships would be enriched but he would never earn much, would you really be happier funding Alice's education?

Because I'm not paying taxes to make other people happy.

My assumption here (and yes, it's possibly a flawed assumption) is that the person working for better job placement will -- on average -- end up contributing more to society than the person going to school because they like to read about obscure long-dead authors.

I don't believe tax money put toward education should be there to make people happy as a primary goal. It should be put there to encourage people to be productive members of society. Hopefully people find happiness along the way, but that's not my concern here.

In either case, you'd be subsidizing someone else's attempt at bettering their own life -- but why is improving their income tax bracket more valuable to you than improving their wellbeing by any other metric that person might choose?

You're putting words in my mouth here, or perhaps just misunderstanding what I'm saying. Jumping up the income tax bracket ladder is a side-effect of producing better work that ends up being a larger contribution to society.

In a hypothetical scenario where you were given the choice of funding Alice's education with the certain knowledge that her degree would get her a high paying job where she'd be miserable, funding Bob's education with the knowledge that his life and relationships would be enriched but he would never earn much, would you really be happier funding Alice's education?

In that specific case, no. I would be equally unhappy funding either of them. But you can't design this kind of public policy for specific extreme cases; you design it for the common average case.

You are presenting a false dichotomy where on one hand you have happy people who are low wage-earners/low producers, and on the other hand you have unhappy (or less happy) people who are high wager-earners/high producers.

There are people who make a lot of money who are happy, and who are unhappy. There are also people who don't make much money who are happy, and who are unhappy. Education in fields that also end up being economically useful need not be any more or less happiness-inducing than productive dead-ends, on average.

One claim which is often made by advocates of education is that it causes productivity to increase, and that the gains from increased productivity are only partially captured by the educated individual. The remainder of the gains are spread about the general population via trade (i.e., a consumer surplus).

If the educated individual is happier but not more productive, there are no gains from trade or consumer surplus to be enjoyed by everyone. Thus, the standard rationale for public education does not apply to such an individual.