If you’ve ever spent more than $500 on textbooks in one semester, then you’ll agree with me when I say that they’re expensive: prohibitively so. That’s troubling to me: the materials we need to study are so expensive that you’ve got students here on campus: I’ve done this: buying old editions or using shabby used copies in order to save a buck. Shouldn’t education be accessible to students of every economic background? Shouldn’t every student here get a new copy of the book they have to read and be tested from? I’m convinced that they should, and I believe there’s something we can do about it.

Over the summer, The Spokesman Review reported on Spokane Community College’s usage of a textbook rental program. They specifically cited a statistics class, which has now seen more students rent a text than buy it. The staff writer, Shawn Vestal, quotes one professor of this statistics class as saying, “It’s a very expensive textbook… it costs $151 to buy the textbook new, $120 to buy the textbook used, and $51 to rent it for a quarter.”

I don’t know about you, but paying $51 to use a $151 text for class sounds like a deal to me. Additionally, you know that the text will be in new condition because it will either be new when you rent it, or it will have been rented before: which means that the renter will probably have to buy it if they damage it. Since most people would try and sell the book back at the end of the semester anyway, who would flinch at returning it? In my experience, the best deal you can get at the bookstore is half of what you paid for it. In the case cited by the Spokesman, you save two-thirds of the cost, as opposed to half by buying the book new and selling back: if the bookstore will even take it.

So what are the obstacles? What prevents us from implementing this price-slashing innovation? Douglas Carlsen, manager of the Whitman College Bookstore, reports that in order for a book to be even considered for rental status, it would have to be guaranteed for a certain lifespan. That means that a professor would have to promise to teach from it for a period of semesters or even multiple years. In some cases, that’s fine, but occasionally classes and teachers will need flexibility to shift texts. Herein lies our quandary. Which is more important: having the latest information within the field you’re studying (i.e., the latest edition of the text) or having a quality version of a slightly-outdated, affordable text?

This is my contention: those two things are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to teach on an affordable basis, filling in the gaps where need be on the textbook. At least my book won’t have every other word highlighted in neon pink, and I’ll still be able to get a coffee every once in a while. Now, if only we can get a few of the faculty to agree, we may be in business.