Students Save Money By Renting Textbooks

One local college is helping students save money by offering textbook rentals.

Metropolitan Community College is one of the few schools in the nation to start a textbook rental program, KMBC's Dion Lim reported.

The cost of textbooks has tripled in the past 20 years. The college noticed that the high prices affected learning because students would either delay purchasing the book or not buy it at all.

"With book rental, more students get books the first day of class so they're not behind on their studies. It helps students and professors, which is what the goal is," bookstore manager Michelle Capps said.

In some cases, the price of renting is almost 80 percent less than buying. One math textbook cost $100 less to rent than to buy.

"The difference between renting and buying is, like, wow," student Jakkob Baldwin said.

"It's definitely an advantage. It's about $70 just to buy each, so when I found out I could rent, I said, 'deal,'" student Jordan Miller said.

Students said they also like that book renting is guaranteed, which isn't the case for textbook sell-back programs.

"You can't always sell them back, and it's upsetting when you don't know what to do with them when you don't use them," student Norman Schultz said.

If a student wants to keep a rented book at the end of the semester, he or she just needs to pay the difference.

Not all textbooks are available to be rented, but the college said it plans to add on more books in the coming years.

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