> "and no loans around to distort prices."

As a result, private school remains kind of a luxury product for people who don't like the free public offering and can afford to pay to send their kids somewhere else.

I can only imagine that if we extended some version of our school loan program to primary/secondary education we would have a lot of highly indebted parents or, god forbid, children, and an explosion of private schools.

Ultimately, it would also drive prices up. The high end would need to be more exclusive (expensive) and everyone else would compete on perceived quality more than price.

Yeah I think that is exactly what would happen. Private school is like 3x more expensive than college probably 5x when you adjust for time value of money

Bad example. There's a free option in the market, so the paid option is for rich people only.

Econ 101 would say that a free option would push the equilibrium price down. I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. There are comments on other stories everyday complaining about how hard it is to price against "free."

Moreover, the owner of the school drives a Toyota. I think my point is that the cost of providing an education is greater than many people think. It's not like colleges are turning a profit off of tuition.

Daycare might be a more compelling one.