Viscount Dibisson's eyes went wide at once. "Six hundred Francs?! Your Highness, is... is that not a little too high..."
One had to know that the best tutors in Paris currently charged only around five or six hundred Francs a year. If it was a female tutor, it could even be as little as 180 Francs a year.
And that was a one-on-one teaching model.
Private noble schools, meanwhile, generally charged between 90 and 150 Francs a year. Yet the Crown Prince had directly set the tuition at four times that!
Joseph motioned for the principal to get into the carriage and said with a smile, "Since the nobles care about appearances, they won't mind the price. In fact, the higher the fee, the better it displays their status."
He knew very well that having noble children and commoners' children squeeze into the same classroom was unrealistic. The nobles would only feel that it made them lose face.
So it was better to let the nobles spend money to buy a sense of dignity, then use that money to subsidize free primary schools.
If this noble campus enrolled one hundred students each year, it would bring in sixty thousand Francs, enough to maintain the expenses of eight or nine primary schools.
If compulsory education was promoted through this model, perhaps the government would not need to spend much on education funds at all.
Joseph continued, "I'll create a position for you in the Ministry of Interior, specifically in charge of nonprofit education work, reporting directly to me. As for the tuition income, it will be managed uniformly by the Education Fund Committee under the Ministry of Interior.
"After that, we'll open several more fee-charging campuses in the Saint-Germain District and the Marais District. The tuition can be set slightly lower,