With the fall semester beginning, students across the country must spend a significant amount of money to buy their textbooks. In Louisiana, Southeastern is the only university with a textbook rental program, which saves students hundreds of dollars on textbooks every year.
Southeastern’s textbook rental program gives students the opportunity to rent up to two textbooks per course at a flat rate of $35 or $175 to rent textbooks for one semester. At other universities students would pay up to $1000 to buy the same books. The rental system is not considered a bookstore, although students have the option of purchasing their rental textbooks at full price at the end of the semester.
“I love it,” said Brandon “Buck” Bernard, a general studies junior, about the textbook rental system at Southeastern. “Buying books at my old school [Pearl River Community College] cost me anywhere from $500 to $700, and here it is already taken care of. It’s nice having that extra spending money instead of having to use it on books.”
According to a university press release, Southeastern’s textbook rental system has been in use for over 75 years and is among the few universities in the country that offer a rental system.
“The program allows the University to provide a cost-savings service to its students,” said Robin P. Rodrigue, director of marketing and strategic initiatives with Auxiliary Services. “It is an excellent recruiting tool for the University since we are the only University in the state that offers a rental program of this magnitude.”
Books that are not available to be rented can be purchased at the University Bookstore or from any other available source. To find out which books need to be purchased, go to the “class search” option on LeoNet, enter course information and view the class details for book purchase details. Although some books must be purchased, the textbook rental system at Southeastern is still helpful to students and the university.
“In my opinion, the textbook rental system is very beneficial. It saves us students a lot of money and time,” said Raymond Jones, a kinesiology freshman.
Rental textbooks can be returned from the second business day after finals through the fifth business day. If a student does not return their books by the fifth business day after the last day of finals, all unreturned books must be purchased at full retail price.
The textbook rental building is located on the North Campus in Building F. Regular hours are Monday through Thursday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. For more information about the textbook rental system, visit their Web site at www.selu.edu/admin/tb_rental or call 985-549-3780.
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The story “Students benefit from rental system” does not adequately describe the prices of renting textbooks from the university. Textbooks are rented at $35 per class, not per textbook. For example, a student enrolled in six classes will pay $210 and a student enrolled in four classes pay $140.