Private tuition has become a malaise in the state’s education system that may almost be diagnosed as incurable. From primary to college and university education, for all the competitive public examinations and important entrance tests, it is often deemed a necessary evil by its most diehard opponents. So cynical realists will not be surprised to learn that the latest careers fair at the University of Calcutta had allowed a ‘campusing’ stall for recruiting prospective tutors for a tutorial home. They will be coaching students for joint entrance, IIT and commerce entrance examinations. The eight applicants who are being considered are physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics graduates, and they could earn up to Rs 10,000 per month if they are hired as tutors. It is significant that the registrar who has allowed this stall at the fair is ideally against such tutorial homes, but has compromised his principles out of sympathy for students who badly need a job. Jadavpur University, on the contrary, has decided not to allow such stalls at its campusing fairs because doing so might look like the university putting its seal of approval on these services.

Private tuition cuts across the divide between government and private schools, colleges and other institutions of higher education. So taking an absolute stance against it in the government institutions will not help if being privately coached remains part of a general ethos. Also, failing to see how an entire system of education and examination fosters such a ‘necessity’ will also result in externally and arbitrarily imposed restrictions that would be easier to break than enforce. Among the most underprivileged students, for instance, most of whom are first-generation learners who have nobody to help with studies at home and who go to schools where the teaching is chronically inadequate, private tutors end up being a positive support. To outlaw them unthinkingly in such a context would leave these students in deep waters. But it would be difficult to keep allowances made in these circumstances confined to such situations only. Greed, habit and the worst kind of apathy, rather than unavoidable helplessness, perpetuate this systemic corruption in the more privileged institutions, the University of Calcutta being one such. And it is at this level that the purging should begin and be sustained relentlessly.