Rent or Buy-Which Textbook Option Is Right for You?

As a rising senior, I have already gone through the textbook buying process six times. Like many other CCNY students, I receive financial aid, and my cash flow is tight. A recent article in the New York Times reports that the average American student spends $700 to $900 a year on textbooks. Spending hundreds of dollars of my own money to buy books is a huge burden. Worse, this semester, my book stipend was delayed and I dreaded what it would mean for my bottom line.

However, City College is trying to help. This semester, CCNY is one of 650 colleges included in a program called Rent-a-Text. Sponsored by the Follett Higher Education Group, a company that runs university bookstores, Rent-a-Text gives each student an online registration account which allows them to rent textbooks through their college campus bookstore. As you get ready to register for Spring (or Winter) classes, now's a good time to start thinking about textbook savings.

Once you rent the book through Rent-a-Text, you have until the official last day of the semester to bring it back to the bookstore without paying a "non-return charge" and processing fee. According to a recent article posted on www.dailycollegian.com, "Last Fall, Follett tested the rental program at seven universities and found students saved, on average, 50 percent or more compared to the cost of new books."

That's how it worked for me: I rented Shirley Biagi's Media Impact for my Introduction to Media Studies class. It retails for $130. I rented it for $58-half of what I would've paid.

In an interview, rising senior, Chanel Jones, said she has been using the Rent-a-Text program offered by her school for two semesters now. "I love it!" said Jones, 21, who is majoring in business at Temple University in Philadelphia. "I never buy books. I rent every chance I get!"

Eva Geoghegan, store manager of the CCNY bookstore, noted that approximately 35% of the textbooks at the bookstore are rentable. "I can't tell you estimates of how many people have rented textbooks but I can tell you that we are trying to get professors on board now," she says. "If they can choose textbooks that will be used up to four semesters in a row then I see this program going very far!"

Though Rent-a-Text is new to CCNY, some students have been renting through other companies like chegg.com and bookrenter.com for a while now. Despite the savings, many students-and professors-don't know about the option to rent. Others aren't even interested. "It seemed too complicated so I didn't even bother to go that route," says Coretta Stembridge, 24, who is majoring in English.

Others have their own ways to avoid the high cost of textbooks. Science major Amaani Bhamla says her system of searching the internet for the best textbook deals on sites like half.com and alibris.com works best for her. "I don't find the [Rent-a-Text] program useful when I can buy my textbooks for barely a dollar and sell them back at the end of the semester," she explains. Sometimes, she adds, she even makes money!

For more information, go to the Rent-a-Text website at www.rentatext.com.

--This article first appeared in CCNY's newspaper, The Campus (see link)