The university’s book store and Student Affairs officials responded to the survey findings by creating an on-campus book rental program designed to save students up to half off on their annual textbook purchases.
The school also launched R’Books, a website that lets UC Riverside students trade and sell books among each other rather than advertising the books on popular sites like Craigslist and Amazon.
“These were some things that we had been considering doing for a long time, but seeing these numbers really motivated us to act,” said Danny Kim, associate vice chancellor at UC Riverside.
Textbook costs are just part of the financial squeeze felt by most UC Riverside students included in the survey.
Tuition is now more than $13,000, with tuition and student fees rising by $2,000 from the 2010-11 academic year. The increases have coincided with a dramatic spike in poverty rates among neighboring towns and cities, according to the university.
The trend of college students taking classes without essential material was among the concerns expressed by organizers of the Textbook Rebellion, a nationwide tour of 40 campuses in 14 states during the fall semester.
Textbook Rebellion launched a website that collects petition signatures aiming to show the widespread support for course textbooks that cost $30 or less, including online books that can be converted to traditional texts through an inexpensive printing process.
Textbook prices have risen by about four times the rate of inflation since 2000, according to federal statistics. Seven in 10 student respondents to a recent Student PIRG survey said they hadn’t purchased at least one assigned textbook due to high costs.
Of those students, eight in 10 said their grades would suffer without the necessary books.
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