Cabrillo College amps up textbook rental program

As anyone who’s attended college knows, aside from tuition and housing, one of the biggest headaches associated with higher education comes with buying textbooks. Cabrillo College students are no exception.
Purchasing new textbooks often costs students hundreds of dollars each semester. But the bookstore at the main Cabrillo campus in Aptos has partnered with the national book rental company Chegg.com to expand the college’s existing rental program and to promote renting books to students as an alternative to purchasing them.
The bookstore began its own rental program in the spring semester of 2009, said Cabrillo bookstore manager Robin Ellis. The original program made available a limited number of books for rental, accounting for about 30 courses.
“Students really needed an option to lower the price of getting textbooks,” Ellis said.
Prior to the spring 2011 semester, the bookstore received a $250,000 U.S Department of Education grant to expand the book rental program, which allowed for the partnership with Chegg.
Starting in January, Cabrillo students have been able to log onto the bookstore’s website or to use one of the iPad terminals at the bookstore to order their textbooks.
Professors at Cabrillo were asked what books they planned to use for their spring 2011 courses, and the responses were put into Chegg’s system, making it relatively simple for students to enter in the course they’d signed up for and find the books they needed, Ellis said.
Though Ellis was unsure of the percentage students would save by renting through Chegg, she said that in the previous semesters on-site rentals often saved students up to 60 percent per book.
With semi-annual new editions of textbooks, limited supplies of used textbooks and new books sometimes costing more than $100 each, students past and present expressed interest, and apprehension, at the idea of renting books.
Regina Khoury, a Ben Lomond resident and current Cabrillo student, had mixed feelings about the program.
She said that while she appreciates the fact that the program offers books that are commonly more expensive for a better price, “they’re not your books.”
“I like to write and take notes on the pages in my textbooks,” Khoury said. “(With rentals) you have to take really good care of the books, because you have to return them and potentially pay for damages.”
Khoury said that she knew people who were planning to take advantage of the program and added that she would consider renting herself if a textbook was particularly expensive.
Kathleen Steingrube attended Cabrillo from 2003 to 2006 before transferring to California State University, Monterey Bay.
“I think it is a great thing,” Steingrube said. “It’s been needed for a long time. I wish it had been there when I attended.”
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