Beginning in the fall, textbooks will have something in common with cars and DVDs.
The Penn Bookstore recently announced that students will soon be able to rent their textbooks instead of buying them. Although the bookstore has not yet determined the exact discount that will be taken off books that are rented, the ballpark range has been given as 25 to 50 percent. And we think that anything that saves students money on often-exorbitant textbook prices is a good thing.
We applaud the Penn Bookstore for making this commitment to helping students save money at a time when many Penn families are facing severe financial difficulties. And we are especially appreciative that the bookstore has said it is willing to forgo profits on textbooks by renting them to students at lower prices — maybe breaking even, or maybe even losing money — in order to assist students.
However, as few as 15 percent of textbooks sold at the Penn Bookstore may be available to rent. Though the bookstore has promised to make the most expensive textbooks — including many of those required for large lecture classes — available for students to rent, students may still need to purchase the vast majority of their textbooks.
While we understand that some subject areas are going to be better fits for this program than others, we encourage professors to communicate and work with the bookstore between now and July 1 — the deadline for books to be added to the bookstore’s rental list — to ensure that as many books as possible make it on that list. Students are going to be a lot more willing to read those 150 pages in three days if they don’t have to also spend $150 on the book they’re reading.
