With every complaint about how expensive school is, there seems to be a reason why there isn’t help available or why someone thinks there is enough being done to aid us students financially.
More programs need to be provided to help students with their educational finances, and at least one place has done something new to aid us this fall.
Here in the Cerritos College bookstore, something is being done about our wallets’ bulimic tendencies.
Look for less cash escaping from your accounts as the bookstore has just launched their first attempt at a book rental program at the start of this semester.
Approximately one fourth of the books sold in the bookstore are now available to be rented straight from campus with the help of the book rental company “Rent-a-Text.”
While this is much appreciated, more parts of the school could follow the bookstore’s example and help us out with new ideas such as this.
Taking into account that this is the bookstore’s first semester offering rentals, and is using a private company to do so while avoiding the cost of running the program itself, they’re doing a good job yet much room to improve.
The main problem with the rental program is that not enough copies of each book offered are being brought to campus for us to rent.
With most books running out in the first days of the first week of school, its apparent that us students have exhausted the program and it needs to be increased.
That being said, students can always contact the “Rent-a-Text” website for books, or go to bookstore for more information on additional sources for rentals off campus.
Seeing the response student have take to this program with line out the door at the bookstore and rental copies flying off the shelf, the desire for additional money saving sources is apparent.
The school can do so much more with the resources available in this day and age.
The Internet is the most underused resource and it costs almost nothing to send electrons across wires encoded with all the information students need to study and learn.
More books should be offered online, or to avoid legal issues with publishers, information can be presented from the book by professors in their own words and posted as blogs or sent in emails.
Using tools such as the internet to save students money may take money away from other businesses like these publishers but it would be better than leaving so many students without books entirely for entire semesters.
These aren’t the only options to aid students but starting somewhere is better than not starting at all.
If the school identifies our demand for these programs, it will hopefully begin creating more that will ultimately leave our minds richer, as well as our pocketbooks.
