Brandy Voirin/ reporter

NE student Tanaysha Brown ordered her Video Basics textbook last week, but it still hadn’t arrived in time for the first test of the semester.

Thankfully, her teacher allowed her to share another student’s textbook.

She’s not alone. Even four weeks into the semester, some students are at a disadvantage because of the high cost of textbooks.

In many cases, the textbooks cost more than the course itself. Sharing textbooks on a regular basis is a novel idea that may be the much-needed answer to student textbook woes.

For example, that Video Basics book costs $201 in the NE Campus bookstore, $195 on Amazon.com and $302 on Cengagebrain.com while the course itself costs $165. For a student, that’s a lot of money.

There are, broadly speaking, two ways of fixing this huge problem.

One is for students to emulate a sharing economy in which a student would lend or rent their book on a daily or weekly basis.

Two is for students to purchase their textbooks together, sharing the price of the book and splitting the profits when resold at the end of the semester.

Sharing the books would force students to spend extra time together, but it would also allow students to save some much-needed funds. As my mother always said, “Sharing is caring.”

Using the required textbook to obtain the coveted degree is the only option.

So instead of just caring about receiving our required textbook this semester, let’s all pledge to care about helping ourselves and our fellow students reach their degree goals as well.