Chegg.com rents textbooks
Posted by Tracy Mendham on July 6, 2009
I just read a New York Times article about a company called Chegg that rents college textbooks. What a good idea!
Alan Bradford, a senior at Arizona State University, read about Chegg in a campus newspaper in 2008 and calculated that his bill for books that semester would have been $334 with Chegg, far less than the $657 he paid. Since then, he has ordered about a dozen textbooks from Chegg.
“Nobody likes paying for textbooks,” he said.
CHEGG is shorthand for “chicken and egg,” a reference to what Mr. Rashid called students’ quandary after graduation: they need experience to get a job, but can’t get experience without having a job.
As a test case, I looked up the price for the text that is being used for Microcomputer Applications this summer. Microsoft System 2003 sells for $100 new, and a used copy of the book costs $81 at the college bookstore. It is available for $25 on Half.com or Amazon, but costs only $9.99 to rent. I’m not sure what shipping costs. If anyone tries Chegg, write a comment below to tell us what it was like and whether you are happy with the service.
