 When children do get educated, the general lack of economic progress in the state means that government jobs are the only alternative to farming labor, yet these jobs, in practice, require bribes to secure – which poorer families cannot afford.This leads to educated youths working on the farms, much as uneducated ones do, and leads parents to question the investment of sending children to school in the first place.Bihar's government schools have also faced teacher absenteeism, leading the state government to threaten to withhold of salaries of teachers who failed to conduct classes on a regular basis.