Photo credit: greenasian on Flickr

Well, the textbook rental program that is starting at Metropolitan State University may not be enough to save meaningful amount of money, it seems.  According this Associated Press piece, there are still several other factors impacting the textbook industry that may cause savings to be less than advertised.

About half the nation’s major college and university bookstores offered textbook rentals this fall, according to the National Association of College Stores, hoping to cut the $600-$900 students spend buying books each year. That’s roughly a fivefold increase from around 300 stores a year ago.

But schools and publishing experts say the programs are expensive to start up and difficult to operate. In addition, there are complaints that rental prices are still too high, even though they can be as much as half the cost of a new book.

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_COLLEGE_TEXTBOOK_RENTALS