SMC to rent textbooks to its students
By SEE BOOKS PAGE 9 BY KEVIN HERRERA Daily Press Staff Writer Christine Chang
SMC Why buy an education when you can rent one?
Concerned about the ever-increasing costs of textbooks, students at Santa Monica College have created a program in which they’ll be able to rent certain tomes for a nominal fee instead of shelling out hundreds of dollars to purchase them.
Associated Students, which represents the roughly 30,000 people enrolled at SMC, has set aside $250,000 for the purchase of 4,000 books, most of which will be in the area of political science, philosophy and mathematics, said Student Trustee Adel Morad.
“This past semester, I took four classes and spent $600 on books, and they were mostly used,”said Morad, a pre-med student who spent more on materials than on tuition, which is $20 a unit.
“Books can be as much as $200 apiece,”
Morad added. “I have financial aid and that helps. My mom and my brother do, too, and if they weren’t paying for it, I probably wouldn’t be in school right now.”
The rental textbook program, which would charge students 10 percent of the books’ listed price, is set to begin this fall.
SMC joins a number of schools across the country that now rent textbooks for a fraction of what it would cost to purchase them. The idea is primarily to save students money, but it also could force textbook publishers to look at ways to cut costs, such as offering students the ability to purchase chapters of a book instead of the whole thing.
A recent congressional study found that high textbook prices are “a significant barrier to access” for low and moderate-income students.
The average student spends between $750 and $1,000 a year on books, and oftentimes they are unable to sell them back or only receive a small percentage of what they initially paid for it, the study found.
State legislators are currently working on a bill that would require textbook publishers to disclose pricing information to professors.
The Oregon Legislature passed a bill this month that forces publishers to be clear about process and options, giving faculty the option of only ordering the books they want, as opposed to “bundling” textbooks together with pricey and often unnecessary CDs and workbooks.
A coalition of student groups have formed the Campaign to Reduce College Textbook Costs. They charge publishers with constantly producing new editions to make purchasing used books impossible. Some of the new editions are in subjects like physics and calculus, which have changed very little in recent years.
“The cost of textbooks are becoming more of an issue because of the shock over the prices and the impacts they are having on students,” said Nadir Vissanjy, chair of the California State Student Association, a member of the coalition. CLAIMING TITLES Amid the flap over textbook costs, publishers point to their own expenses. Thousands of man hours go into each title, of which only 20 percent are ever money makers. The rest of the titles are subsidized by the more popular books, said J. Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education for the Association of American Publishers in Washington, D.C.
“I understand, for some students, it is a very painful experience buying books,” said Hildebrand, who painted houses and drove bulldozers to pay his way through college. “What is missing from this debate is that the faculty is choosing these texts.
“They are choosing what they believe is best for their students.”
And that includes bundles. Faculty have several options when ordering.
They can go with bundles that include extra teaching materials or pick the bare minimum paperback versions.
As more students enter colleges ill-prepared, more materials are needed, meaning more expensive textbooks, according to Hildebrand. Books are rarely updated each year, pointing to data that show only.4 percent of books published each year are new editions.
“We are fine with rentals,” he said. “It’s just another option students can use. As for transparency, we’re all for it.”
The SMC bookstore currently orders roughly 2,000 different titles each year.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 27, 2007. Read the original PDF.