This paper investigates into the reading habits of the English medium private university students with Bengali medium background. It analyses the realities in the context, which are both nurturing the old and shaping new reading habits of the students. The data gathered by means of interview schedule have been analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The data shows that our students' reading habits--avoiding text books, memorizing ready-made things for exam purposes, very little reading in not only English but Bengali as well--do not change remarkably during their tertiary level of study at the private universities. Rather they are further solidified and nurtured by the teachers' supply of lecture notes, an acute lack of motivation for reading the study materials in English, and the negative backwash of the exam system. These causes of the undesirable reading habits can be removed only if all the teachers dealing with the students come forward and work together with the English teachers for a long period of time to achieve the aims.