Fighting the cost of textbooks
Web site minimizes prices, aids environment with rental option
Sara Castellanos
Issue date: 3/4/08 Section: News
When you return from spring break later this month, you, like other DU students, will be forking out a lot of cash for textbooks for your spring quarter courses.
Maybe you don't have to.
Purchasing college textbooks each quarter easily puts a dent in your bank account, often hundreds of dollars. This is exactly why University of Minnesota graduate Osman Rashid decided to develop a Web site that allows students to save money - and help the environment also.
Chegg.com, an online textbook rental company, provides high school and college students with millions of titles to choose from and rents textbooks at a fraction of the list price, saving students up to 65 percent of their textbook bill. To date, the company estimates it has saved students over $2 million on textbooks.
Apart from providing students with a cheaper alternative to buying textbooks, the company reduces the impact that textbook manufacturing has on the environment. Each time a student rents a textbook from the service, the company plants a tree through the reforestation group Eco-Libris. Eco Libris operates all over the world and studies the places that have been most affected by deforestation, then plants indigenous trees in that area.
Chegg.com has grown to 25 times its original size since 2003, and students from 1,500 campuses nationwide are using the service, said CEO and co-founder Osman Rashid.
Rashid said the idea for Chegg.com came from looking into ideas for where he and Vice President Aayush Phumbhra could deliver a positive impact to students.
"After tossing around ideas, we thought, why not do a "netflix" system for textbooks? Demand is so massive and the parents and kids are going through so much financial distress that it became an obvious thing to do," Rashid said.
Chegg was originally launched as Textbookflix.com, and in 2007 officially changed its name to Chegg - a combination of "chicken" and "egg."
While Rashid did not mention exact statistics on how many students currently use the system, his online textbook rental site might attract business from DU students.
Maybe you don't have to.
Purchasing college textbooks each quarter easily puts a dent in your bank account, often hundreds of dollars. This is exactly why University of Minnesota graduate Osman Rashid decided to develop a Web site that allows students to save money - and help the environment also.
Chegg.com, an online textbook rental company, provides high school and college students with millions of titles to choose from and rents textbooks at a fraction of the list price, saving students up to 65 percent of their textbook bill. To date, the company estimates it has saved students over $2 million on textbooks.
Apart from providing students with a cheaper alternative to buying textbooks, the company reduces the impact that textbook manufacturing has on the environment. Each time a student rents a textbook from the service, the company plants a tree through the reforestation group Eco-Libris. Eco Libris operates all over the world and studies the places that have been most affected by deforestation, then plants indigenous trees in that area.
Chegg.com has grown to 25 times its original size since 2003, and students from 1,500 campuses nationwide are using the service, said CEO and co-founder Osman Rashid.
Rashid said the idea for Chegg.com came from looking into ideas for where he and Vice President Aayush Phumbhra could deliver a positive impact to students.
"After tossing around ideas, we thought, why not do a "netflix" system for textbooks? Demand is so massive and the parents and kids are going through so much financial distress that it became an obvious thing to do," Rashid said.
Chegg was originally launched as Textbookflix.com, and in 2007 officially changed its name to Chegg - a combination of "chicken" and "egg."
While Rashid did not mention exact statistics on how many students currently use the system, his online textbook rental site might attract business from DU students.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Leah
posted 3/04/08 @ 8:02 AM MST
Never mind that a number of DU's students already use half.com. I only bought books at the bookstore that would cost more to ship (paperback novels, mainly). (Continued…)
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