Oh, those text charges. No, not the fees for pecking out text messages on a cellphone, but the cost of every college student's must-buy: textbooks.
Students spend about $1,000 a year on their texts, according to the College Board. And that most likely will increase: Over the past 20 years, textbook prices have increased at twice the inflation rate, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. One solution may be renting. Several companies offer textbook rentals that could save cash-poor college students more than 50% of the cost of a book.
To see how the process works, we ordered textbooks from three rental companies: Book Renter, Campus Book Rentals and Chegg; and one textbook seller, Textbooks.com, which doesn't rent books, but offers guaranteed buybacks on some texts, making those books a quasi-rental.
| Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas