Textbook borrowing

Jil Heimensen, student and member of the Student Fee Committee, posted information about the increasing number of college campuses offering textbook renting programs.

According to the New York Times article she posted on the Portland State Student Fee Committee blog (www.psusfc.com), more and more college campus bookstores are offering textbook borrowing programs to students, renting books at 30 to 70 percent off the list price.

Cengage Learning, one of the country’s largest textbook publishers, is implementing this program in participating college bookstores and with unaffiliated bookstores that sell high volumes of textbooks around campuses.

Crucial to implementing the program, according to the article, is the commitment from professors to use the same text for at least two years, a challenge given the frequency of new editions.

Heimensen cannot do much to push for the program as an SFC member, explaining that her days are packed with classes and committee work. One option available to get this program running, she said, would be to form a student group.

However, textbooks are costly, and it takes years for new student groups to become eligible for more than $5,000 of funding, according to SFC and Student Activities and Leadership Programs rules.

Another option, Heimensen said, would be for the Portland State bookstore to offer this sort of program in cooperation with high-volume publishers or even independently. This could be costly, however, and for other universities, rental is not profitable until the book has been rented for four semesters, or two years. 

Portland State does not currently offer a rental program for textbooks. Professors can put course materials on reserve at the library but this is typically limited to just a few textbooks for the whole class.

“I think it’s a great idea, it’s just the implementation that is a challenge,” Heimensen said.

Private bookstores that operate in conjunction with colleges recently began piloting the program as well. Barnes and Noble College Booksellers will test the success of book borrowing at three of its 624 college bookstores, according to the New York Times article.

National Public Radio also reported on the trend, noting that Sacramento State University has started to rent books out this year. They offer approximately 15 percent of required titles for rental.

Costs vary depending on the university, and current buy and sell back policies already offered by most college bookstores are often a better deal than rental reimbursements.

“It’d be a great benefit to everybody at the university,” Heimensen said.

Heimensen hopes that somebody will take up the mantle and work towards making textbooks more affordable for all students.