College savings: Should you rent your textbooks?

I agree, When I was going to Carleton U. I spent hundreds on books. Why buy it brand new when you can get it used or just rent them. It makes more sense to me. Tution is expensive enough, we don't need the books to be as well.

Students should absolutely NOT rent their textbooks, and further, they should not be so quick to get rid of them when they are finished with them! They've paid a fortune in money and time for their education, the substance of which is often in these textbooks. These books are a first installment in their future library, which should increase with care over time- believe me, it's a valuable future resource! It may be wise to buy them used from someone who is not keeping them, but the textbooks you acquire during these costly years (on so many levels!) should not be abandoned but cherished.

Textbooks from K through college and University should be a thing of the past. One notebook sized computer with specialized and microsized plug-ins is all that is required. Buy the plug-in or rent the plug-in and presto all your text needs will be in your notebook. No trees lost and hopefully some genuine savings for students. I think newspapers should go the same route. Special line hook up to either your phone or computer and download today's paper to a foldable plastic (half-sized) newspaper type sheet. To change a page just squeeze the edges.

borrow them from a public library, use an older version of the text if the material doesn't change much, share with a neighbour... it does help to cut costs. If the textbook is that important, you can always sell it when you complete the class & buy it back for $5 in a few years time... wow, I must have really been desperate for beer money in my college days

My daughter was able to buy many of her 1st year text books used; however, one couse she had to buy new in order to get an "access code" for the assignments. Imagine our frustration after paying over $200, that it took 6 weeks for technical support to get the code to work. She ended up behind in assignments, and the prof was extremely unforgiving with only a slight extension for submissions - it was his requirement for this venue...new text books are just a $ grab by whoever is making the money off them. There is no good reason why a text book isn't valid for more than one year! I agree with Ronald Fry, as long as there is a good support network should there be a problem.

We put 2 kids thru University in Canada. Paid $1000/yr per child for texbooks and some were not needed. When our first child went to Univ, we purchased the book requirements from the class list in advance and were stuck with some that the prof's didn't want. After that waited until they attended first class to find out requirements. Only problem was availabilty of the books after that. Waited 6 weeks for one to come because it had to be special ordered. Would love to have seen a rental program in place. Kids are now done and we have textbooks in boxes in our garage becuase the kids don't want them. Tried to sell some, but they were the wrong "version."

This might seem counter intuitive but this works well.

The books that aren't in your major field of study (that you don't plan to keep) should be bought new. This allows you to easily resell them at the end of the semester. Typically it is much harder to resell a previously used book back (new edition, additional wear etc).

The books in your major field of study that I plan on keeping I bought used. This brought their cost down dramatically.

I think its a great idea to rent books. As I was going through university, the one thing that stood out in my mind was, what to do with all the books once the school year was over. It would save students lots of money if they could rent books on a yearly basis. Problem is, many profs choose to update their curriculum with new editions, so many books become useless after a year's use.

I totally agree with Accter. Old edition textbooks are impossible to sell, at least in developed countries (developing countries are more than happy to accept them as donations). It is also easy enough to share the cost of books with a few like minded students, and when the books are sold, share the proceeds as well. Unfortunately, compared to the 1980s when I went to university, textbooks are getting out of date with alarming speed. Many times a new edition is out even before the course is complete. As a university professor I am sometimes behind on the new editions myself, and to keep my own library reasonably up to date I am spending some hard-earned salary. Often one has to go to on-line resources to fill the gap. Many textbooks nowadays come with keys to their online websites, which in turn comes back to sharing textbooks as a real possibility (assuming the publisher "allows" this).

For years I hung onto my texts but I never used them again. Since the information changes so much making them useless to resell them why bother hanging onto them. The internet is such a valuable and easy source of information that what ever you need it more likely to be online and upto date rather than in some old dusty text book.

Chances are you don't even need the text books. Many profs teach off their own notes and create the exams based on them. They might ask a question or two off the text book, but that would only account for a few marks. My advice: sit in class for two weeks and if the prof requires the students read from the text, then it may be worth looking into. Generally though, you'll find that teachers require students read the text, but they test off their own notes or what's been discussed in lecture.

I agree with Wildyam. I bought all the books for my first semester and never had to read any of them because the profs would just summarize them in class. When I went to trade in my brand-new, unused textbooks at the end of the semester I was offered $6 or $7 for a book that I paid more than $80 for. Needless to say I just didn't buy them for subsequent semesters and still graduated. Most of these textbooks are just another money-grab by these profs who are paid $80k a year just to teach three hours a week and use the rest of the time to write textbooks to generate even more income from the sales.

GO TO CLAS. Get the outline and supplement with research and other university postings of course material on the internet. Also, get 4 classmates to buy one text and share the info on the CD roms that often come with the texts. BUY NO TEXTS. WASTE O" MONEY. Have a souped up laptop for $1000.

The whole textbook scam is just a joke. When I started University I bought them all new because of the 'valuable' information. By the time I graduated I had learned not to buy ANY textbooks (share/rent if need be) or check other libraries who run the same courses during different semesters. You are going to University to learn how to learn, not to make a fat prof rich or acquire lots of books which will be declared inaccurate in two years. Save the money, you will need it for the massive debt upon graduation.

Whenever practical, sharing is a great options, but so far the only textbooks I have ever looked at after university were language and literature(eg classics and poetry etc.). Everything else changes after a few years and somehow becomes inaccurate. Keeping up wqith the changes would require staying in school full-time, and no one is going to borrow them from your "library" later on. Buy only what you can't rent/buy discounted, sell what you can and ONLY get what you must.

Not only do textbooks become irrelevant quickly.... I experienced many professors who taught the same course annually, and continued to update their"base" textbook each year with new information, and a new version. The professors change the text books almost yearly - they write the text books. They are getting an additional annual salary off the sales of their books.

Scam? Yes. Could we hand out a few double sided photocopied pages of updates to each student? No...we need a new book.

How about the environmental impact of the text books? Could we perhaps utilize the online world and go paperless? Let's get with the times people.

It's not the COST....it's the whole scenario. textbooks change yearly to make profs richer.
creation and disposal of textbooks kills the environment.

I paid so much for some of my Uni texts, that I still have them 10 years later on my bookshelf. get rid of them? heck no, they cost me a fortune!

I studied English in University which meant each semester I would have to buy 5+ books for each class. I bought most of mine but thinking back, I should have just borrowed them out. It would have saved me a lot of money. I'm fortunate in that most of my texts were actual books that I can and would probably read again. But for the classes that required actual textbooks...I found like many of you here that the prof notes were sufficient and the text would usually sit untouched. And resale value was a joke along with the lines to resell.

Let me for a moment defend the "fat university prof"
I teach 3 courses at a major Canadian university. I have 15 years of post-high school education.
My in-between class informal teaching takes about 6 hours a week.
I have received 3 thank you cards from students in the last 9 years.
I get 40K a year from the university. I teach because I love to do so.
Thank God I have other sources of income. Where all the students' tuition goes I have no idea.