OPINION: The renting vs. buying debate

AVC bulletin boards with deals on used textbooks

By Christina Myles

For a student, textbooks are our lifelines for four years until we are handed a degree on stage in front of our friends and family. They are supposed to be the means of us furthering our education. But with the prices of books today, they have literally instead of psychology become our life support, forcing us to make life or death decisions over their ridiculous amounts. More and more, we as students have began leaning towards no longer making these large purchases whatsoever.

Then, sent from the heavens, comes the ability to rent our books. With that, there is the obvious benefit of a price cut.

Prime example of a depressing time is my current abnormal psychology class. In the Antelope Valley College bookstore, the required text is only sold as the newest seventh edition (as if the year old sixth edition somehow became outdated to the point of no return) for a womping $154 before taxes, mind you. Look here, AVC, I am a full time student, part-time worker. $154 for one book?! Definitely not!

 In speaking to many of other students, Chegg.com has become the number one go-to to allow us students to rent the exact same reading material for a mere $44! To break the rental process down, I am allowed to keep it for an entire semester and return it back to Chegg once the semester has been completed (with a provided return shipping label, so it is completely free!).

But there is more. Let's all be honest to ourselves. How many of us actually use, open, or simply stare at our old history or anthropology books when we have established a nursing career? I know I haven’t taken the time to even glance at an old textbook and I am still in school. Why clutter your house and bookshelves with unused, ten year old schoolbooks when they could have been rented and returned within a semester? Smart, right?

And last, we have the Antelope Valley College's textbook buyback option. This option has become popular in the last few semesters. Not for myself though. The AVC bookstore website says enough for me to avoid this at all costs. "New textbooks may be bought back by the book buyer at 50% of the purchase price of they have been requisitioned by the instructor for the upcoming semester. Most other books may be sold to the used book buyer for a smaller percentage."

To me, this means, professors would have to change to a newer textbook every single semester for me to be able to sell my $200 book back only to receive $100 for. Pathetic. And, if it is more than a semester old, I may only receive $50 back. It simply is not worth it for me. I cannot be the only one who finds that to be insulting and a complete waste of time.

Why don’t we stop buying into the "help fund our college by purchasing overpriced textbooks" scam and look out for our own bank account and sanity? Just rent, save money, save time and I am positive our bank accounts will gloriously thank us in the end.