Let them have textbooks

We pay a lot of money every year for college, and the prices keep going up. But one necessity is actually costing less: textbooks.

Students can easily spend hundreds of dollars on their books, even used ones, and expect to get almost nothing for selling them back. With the rise of e-books, many are starting to switch over to cheaper electronic copies, but lots of students still prefer paper copies they can highlight. Bookstores are catching on.

This semester, the IU Bookstore and T.I.S. are offering books for rent at half off the retail price. Not only are students paying less for their textbooks, they’ve also got a guaranteed way to get rid of them at the end of the semester.

The bookstores allow students to highlight and make notes in the books, and as long as there’s no water damage, the books can be returned.This is a great option for all of us.

How many people have spent hours searching through Amazon, Chegg and other online stores to find the lowest price possible so they don’t spend $500 a semester on books?

I’m a big believer in e-books, but I don’t need the results of Amazon’s Kindle’s test at several schools to tell me that e-readers aren’t great for studying (yet). 

Whenever professors assign readings on Oncourse or JSTOR, I make use of my printing allotment so I can have them in my hands to shuffle around and highlight. Studying text on a computer is hard for the eyes.

After we pay ridiculous prices for hard copies of books, it’s almost impossible to sell them back. Either there’s a new version out or the bookstores aren’t willing to pay very much for books professors haven’t ordered for the next semester.

This is particularly hard for those of us in departments where classes are offered solely in the fall or the spring, so professors don’t need the books the next semester and by the next year, there’s a new version.

Renting textbooks takes care of both problems. Sure, I still dropped almost $200 for textbooks this semester, but that’s about half what I usually spend. And now I don’t have to worry about lugging them all in at the end of the semester to get $14 back.

I just have to keep them in decent condition — but I’m still allowed to highlight to my heart’s content. The rental system isn’t new this semester, but it’s being advertised more. (This year, IU Bookstore employees actually told me about it when I was paying for books.)

It’s also being expanded to include more books. I couldn’t rent everything this semester, but about 80 percent of my books were covered. And the price difference is easy to see — I paid the same amount for the four books that weren’t rented as I did for the dozen books that were.

I’m glad to see bookstores paying attention to students’ need for cheaper textbooks.
 
­— hanns@indiana.edu