For many full time college students, it may already be financially difficult to pay for 12 or more units of classes. This only leaves time to work a part time job that possibly pays for other expenses such as rent or the essential items like food. When all is said and done, we are then forced to fork up any extra monies to cover our course materials like textbooks.

Most teachers require textbooks to be purchased for their classes. There are only a few options students can use to obtain books: the internet, where you can buy and rent textbooks for 75% of the full price, or the school bookstore, where you are forced to pay full price for a brand new textbook that you will only need for one semester. The issue with this is that publishers are constantly creating new editions every few semesters making it impossible to re-use current textbooks.

School and living fees are costly enough. If only there was a way to make the current textbooks last longer so they can be re-used and sold for a much cheaper price. It would even be beneficial if the rental fees were cut down to only 25 percent of the purchase price instead of the 75 percent currently charged.

President Obama recently gave a speech on January 27 to college students at the University of Michigan. During this speech he said, “College is the single most important investment you can make in your future.” Why then is it so difficult to afford necessary materials? We as college students are already struggling with tuition fees. We need to change the amount we spend on textbooks in order to focus more on our education, not the “extras” that come with it.