High prices and high turnover rates for textbooks have long burdened students' budgets and are especially problematic in light of the recent economic downturn. Now, several university bookstores are doing something about it.
Textbook rental programs are addressing the need for more affordable book options and are on the rise around the country. California State University, Sacramento is one of approximately 100 schools in the nation using such a program, in which book warehouses or publishers sell popular book titles to universities, allowing schools to then rent these textbooks to students instead of selling them, according to the National Association of College Stores.
In order for many universities to be able to rent these titles, however, professors must commit to using the textbooks for a minimum of four semesters. The commitment helps to guarantee a substantial payoff on these books.
Sacramento State avoided this issue altogether by using a different retail warehouse with atypical procedures.
"We are a Follett vendor store, so it's Follett that actually decides whether they can use this book or not at a location," said Pam Parsons, Sacramento State's bookstore director. Follett, a retail and wholesale distributor of educational materials, doesn't require faculty commitment.
"Because we don't have faculty commitment, it is purely Follett's decision ... whether they believe the book can be used," Parsons said.
According to Sacramento State's Rent-A-Text Facebook.com page, not all textbooks are allowed to be rented. A book needs to be "a popular title and early on in its lifecycle ([a] recently released edition) to qualify." Large lecture classes, like Psychology 101 and Anatomy, are likely to have rentable textbooks, while more specialized, concentrated courses might not. About 15 percent of the texts in the Sacramento State bookstore are rentable.
Other programs allow every textbook to be adopted and rented. But because professors rarely guarantee that they will re-use the same textbooks, such programs usually are not options. Only approximately 20 schools implement this type of rental program, said Carolyn LaQuaglia, store manager for the Tufts bookstore.
The Rent-A-Text program is not the first time Sacramento State has tried to rent students textbooks; they initially tried requiring professors to commit for four semesters, but that was ineffective.
"When we tried it that way, we got very little response," Parsons said.
LaQuaglia agreed that "it'll be difficult to get the commitment out of them."
Barnes and Noble, the vendor used by the Tufts Bookstore, is offering its own pilot rental program this fall. But according to the New York Times, only three universities are participating due to the fact that many faculty members were unwilling to commit to using the same textbook for multiple years.
Yet at Tufts, the faculty's willingness to commit doesn't appear to be a big concern.
"It sounds like a good idea to me, especially with the changing economy," history professor Gary Leupp said. Although departments such as history are subject to continuously changing scholarship, and therefore a barrage of new textbooks each year, Leupp said that committing to re-using a textbook would still be possible, though not necessarily desirable.
"For about 10 years I was using the same textbook," Leupp said. "It's just that I kind of like to have the flexibility of changing."
For the math department, where the subject material doesn't frequently change with new studies, renting textbooks to students could be a possibility.
"For the large courses we have, such as calculus, we have in fact used the same textbook for quite some time, close to 10 years now," mathematics professor Boris Hasselblatt said. "However, at the same time, publishers keep changing editions whether we want that or not."
The math department has tried in the past to make it easier for students to get by without buying a textbook. Calculus I students currently do their homework online using WeBWorK, an online program converter. WeBWorK allows professors to "create problems and put them on the Web, allowing students to have instant feedback," Hasselblatt said.
According to Hasselblatt, due to the program's success for the Calculus I class, the math department will do the same for Calculus II in the spring and will accordingly make the calculus textbook recommended instead of required for students.
Aside from faculty commitment, the cost of a textbook rental program is holding back universities from moving for ward with these programs; it is often much more than a budget can allow.
"In order for the university to have to pay for [a rental program], it costs millions of dollars up front," LaQuaglia said. Once the school pays the lump sum in the beginning, it can then allow textbooks to be rented out.
Not only does a school bookstore need the money to start a program, but school stores also need to take into consideration storage space, determining a pricing scale and how to handle unreturned rented textbooks.
"It wasn't something hugely successful in that regard, because ... you don't want to dig yourself into a hole you can never get out of," LaQuaglia said.
For students, the cost is minimal. Renting textbooks can be significantly cheaper than having to buy them new and, according to Parsons, this means students would not have to pick and choose between two expensive textbooks.
Not surprisingly, students are eager to jump on the rental bandwagon.
"I would participate in the program if Tufts did it," freshman Nora Vanni said. "It seems crazy that we have to buy textbooks, especially for introductory classes where you don't have to get into course material as deeply."
Parsons said that the cost of a used book would be slightly cheaper than a rented one. Still, with the rental program, students save that amount of money up front, as opposed to having to buy a used textbook and then selling it back to the store, which would mean waiting a full semester before having saved money.
Whether or not Tufts will implement a rental program of its own remains uncertain. "We're testing it, so we're ready to operate if the school demands it," LaQuaglia said, "but there are certain things that need to happen first."
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This article originally incorrectly referenced Webworks as opposed to WeBWorK. This mistake was corrected on 10/30/09
