Textbook rental service not feasible at UW

     Imagine not owning any textbooks.

 Now, that leap of faith aside, imagine paying just $25 per book for those you use.     For students in the San Mateo California Community College District (SMCCCD) in San Mateo, California, both of these seemingly far-fetched possibilities are reality.

Thanks to a recently expanded rental service provided by their school's bookstore, many students who attend a SMCCCD school — there are three in the district — don't own a single textbook, and those they do use have been rented to them at a steeply discounted rate. 

While this situation may sound ideal to more than a few students at UW who are shelling out several hundred dollars per quarter for new textbooks, UW officials have mixed feelings regarding the feasibility of such a program here.

"Any way you look at it, we have the economic model that is in the best interest of our students," said Bryan Pearce, the chief executive officer of the UW bookstore.

ASUW President Cullen White, on the other hand, advocated a hybrid system which would work to make rental books available for courses that rarely change material, citing the example of an introductory theory class that teaches Locke and Hobbes year in and year out.

"I think we could effectively use a program like this for those courses that don't change much over time," White said. "To a certain degree it's feasible. I'm one of the people who think that anything is possible to a degree, depending on the environment you're working in." 

However, Tom Bauer, the director of auxiliary services for SMCCCD bookstores, feels his school's model is the best.

"It's pretty compelling," Bauer said of SMCCCD's rental program, which he says has saved San Mateo's 7000 students more than $112,000 since 2004.

The rental program started in 2001 when money from California's tobacco tax that was being used to buy books outright for San Mateo's early childhood education program began to run out, Bauer said. 

Diane Eyer, a professor in the department, then had the idea to buy all the books at once and then rent them out to students.

   While seemingly brilliant, the bookstore at San Mateo ran into more than a few problems, particularly regarding funding. 

"If you're not able to fund [the rental program] through federal and state funding, the biggest problem is funding," Bauer said. "That is only followed by faculty wanting to be a part of it, because if faculty don't want it, it won't happen. Faculty can be resistant because it requires a two-year commitment to use the same book, sometimes three, and faculty don't want to be put in a box where they have to use the same book for three years."

These, Pearce said, are the same dilemmas faced by UW's booksellers.

"It's an issue of raising the upfront capital," Pearce said, noting that UW spends nearly $2 million on buying books for its students, while San Mateo spends around $400,000.

"Rental systems are getting a lot of attention because they're an alternative, but there isn't a school out there of our type using it," Pearce added. "It has nothing to do with the bookstore and everything to do with the way the system operates. Number one, [the rental program] is just not the best economic model. Number two, is the whole idea of academic freedom; a lot of the faculty don't like to be told what to do with course material. At San Mateo, there's maybe 40 courses that use rental course books, here there's literally thousands of courses."

White also remained cautious about the idea.

"[A rental system] usually works good at smaller schools, but you're not likely to find it at large, flagship universities like ours," he said. 

Pearce was particularly emphatic when breaking down how much a UW student can save with the current system in place at the bookstore. 

He noted how a brand new $100 textbook can be reduced to a net cost of $42, and a used one to $19, thanks to end of the quarter buybacks and the eight-percent bookstore student rebate.        

Pearce also reminded UW students that the bookstore is a non-profit entity.

"Part of it for us, and this is a national issue, is having influence over the publishers — 76-80 percent of what you pay for a textbook goes to the publishers. A lot of students think the bookstore is ripping them off and driving up the price, but [course books] are one of the lowest profit margins in the company."

Reach reporter Keegan Hamilton at news@thedaily.washington.edu.