PrintStatements such as “SAVE 25% ON TEXTBOOKS” and “GET AMAZING SERVICE! WHERE? YOUR CAMPUS BOOKSTORE OF COURSE” pollute the inboxes of anyone unfortunate enough to be subject of blast e-mails sent to Columbia undergraduates. Replace the word “book” in those e-mails, and you have a proclamation that could easily come from a used car advertisement. Unfortunately, just like any flashy ads, these bookstore announcements often fall flat: a student purchasing at the bookstore will only save 25 percent on used books, which are not always available.
As the spring term begins, Columbia students are buckling down and acquiring their necessary course materials. The Columbia bookstore is popular with many students looking for the convenience of stocking up on campus. Jade Roth, vice president of books at Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, attributes that popularity to the fact that the bookstore directors “strive to provide students with all the options that they need for what the professors are requiring.”
The bookstore is convenient for pickup—a student need not worry about delivery charges. It also is connected to SSOL, allowing a student to determine which books are required for his or her courses by clicking a single button that directs users to the products on the bookstore Web site. “We also offer components separately,” Roth continues, “looking to give students as many options over as many price ranges as possible.”
The official bookstore is an easy option, but it is also an expensive one. According to the Financial Aid Web site, Columbia provides 46 percent of undergraduates financial aid in the form of grants. Even so, many students are hard-pressed to come up with the additional money to purchase textbooks from the school bookstore for any given semester. A related frustration for many students is the fact that the bookstore’s “used” packages are often unavailable, and the bookstore checkout page will instead feature the new, full-price option. A student in a rush to order books in time for the beginning of classes, however frustrated, might just purchase the new ones. As Columbia College first-year Amanda Gutterman, a Spectator opinion columnist, notes, “I selected the ‘Used if Available’ option for a Lit Hum box set, but when I placed my order, on the final review page only the new came up. I wanted to get my books quickly, so instead of spending hours sorting through used books on Amazon, I just gave up and paid the extra money.” This sort of situation arises frequently as students scramble to find their books in time for classes. Are the benefits of bookstore shopping worth the cost? Especially in light of the economic downturn, more and more students are seeking alternative ways to purchase books and avoid shelling out a semester’s worth of work-study income simply to do their nightly reading.
Textbook rental has recently emerged as an alternative to the traditional textbook purchases from school-affiliated or independent bookstores. The rental system takes a familiar reality into account: students often take a course in a given subject area for one semester, purchase a pricey text, and then never need the book again. With rentals, a fee is paid—usually significantly less than the purchase price—and the student returns the book at the end of the semester.
At a school like Columbia, where the Core requires students to take courses across various disciplines, the rental system makes a lot of sense. For instance, the Science of Psychology course syllabus, a popular choice among non-science majors to fill the science requirement, lists over $100 worth of course materials. Many of these students, who will never use those books again, could rent the same for a semester for a mere $41.99 from Chegg.com, a popular textbook rental Web site.
Textbook rental services such as Chegg.com and BookRenter.com also address the issue of students who drop courses later in the semester. If a student opts to drop a course after the ten-day add/drop or change-of-program period, he or she must “sell back” textbooks to the Columbia bookstore, as opposed to returning them for a full refund. “I tried to sell back some of my books first semester,” notes Columbia College first-year Andrew West, “but they would only give me a few dollars for books I had bought completely new, because it was past the add/drop period. I shouldn’t lose that much money just because I changed my mind about courses a few days too late.” While BookRenter.com has a similarly strict deadline for returns, Chegg.com allows students a 30 day grace period for returns.
Barnes and Noble College Booksellers, of which the Columbia bookstore is an operating branch, has recognized this trend and has consequently begun a textbook-rental program in a small portion of their over 600 on-campus bookstores. The company plans to expand this program. Will Columbia be included any time soon? “That,” answers Roth, “would be a discussion between us and Columbia.” Regardless of the ultimate decision, students have already begun to disregard the bookstore e-mails that flood their inboxes in favor of services that guarantee savings.