From Cal State Fullerton
What student and her parents haven't been staggered these days not just by the total cost of a university education but also by the steeply rising costs of books? A key player in the hefty tariff for texts, of course, is the teacher. How and why do profs decide to pick certain books, and more crucially, what does it take to convince them to teach from the same text for multiple terms? A dash of federal dollars could go a long way to boosting a novel Orange County take on reducing the cost of books by renting them to students at much lower cost. Rentals work only if a store can re-use the texts enough to recover their costs. A campus bookstore has launched a rental program with 40 titles now and would expand it -- if research can help provide more insight on faculty and student choices on texts, the rentals of which are for lower-level, general education books whose content changes little year-to-year. By the way, proponents say students save 25% by purchasing used books, 45% by buying digital texts if they're available. And rentals? They can trim as much as 65% of the cost for young scholars.
Insight sought on faculty, student choices on increasingly costly textbooks
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