The book rental program at Cerritos College has accordingly saw a spike of rented text books by 34 percent of purchases from students since the beginning of this semester.

“For fall, our rental number since the program began, we have rented 2,900 books to students this semester.” Bookstore Manager Robin Lee said.

Although the significance of the number is relatively low with 23,000 Cerritos College students enrolled, Lee is looking forward to higher numbers for the Spring semester.

“For the first semester it usually starts out a little low from what we’ve seen at colleges, but then as you go further with rental more titles become eligible for rent,” Lee added.

As the book rental program has been available at Cerritos College, students are able to rent certain books that are eligible. Titles that are for rent allow a reduction in price by 50 percent.

Some students at Cerritos who have used the program, such as Brittani Robles, have reportedly experienced the ease of renting books on campus and saving money. “Its helped me save money because instead of buying books I can rent them and it’s easy because its right here on campus.” Robles said.

With the increase of students renting text books, the sales that go to the book store,  Cerritos College receives a portion of the money that is being purchased when students rent books.

“What is really cool about the book store is that we give a portion of our sales back to the campus. We pay a portion of our sales to the student body (ASCC).

By putting rental on campus and getting students another avenue to purchase books will not only give them the tools that they need to be successful but by bringing students into the book store where’re able to give more money back to the campus.” Lee said.

Text books that are rented are under a four term commitment that professors have to

agree in contract with before the title of their book is eligible for rent, which is

Comparing the purchasing of text books from the previous semesters, Adrian Macias, History major, was able to save money from renting books instead of purchasing the text books at full price.

“My receipt came out to be $52 and I remember last semester I had bought a book and paid $100 and when I brought it back I didn’t get anything for it and I used the book only a couple of times.”

Macias and Robles who have took advantage of the book rental program are one the 23,000 Cerritos College students that experienced the privileges of renting text books at half price.

The anticipation of the book rental club in its first semester was underestimated according to Lee, but as she sees the rise in the numbers of students renting books, the book store is preparing a new list of text books that will be eligible for the Spring semester.

“We don’t have all the adoptions in yet, we haven’t gotten all the choices that the professors are making for the Spring and with the adoptions we’ve gotten so far, we’re already at 34 percent, so we already gotten up four percent just from the little group of adoptions that we have.

I’m really optimistic that this number is going to go up with the more adoptions that we get in, the more text books we see that are chosen, the more we can determine which

ones can be rental eligible and which can’t.” Lee said.