Science is a career for those passionate about science, not for those looking to make a lot of money. Long hours and dismal pay (relative to the amount of time spent in school) are normal, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a method for reducing the cost of higher education: textbooks for rent.

When I was an undergraduate, students bought textbooks from the university store. At the time a group of entrepreneurs parked a truck near the university book store and sold textbooks from the back at a discount.

With the rise of the internet, I could purchase textbooks online at an even greater discount, but in the end I still lost - having spent hundreds of dollars per semester on textbooks, I could sell them back to the university for a small fraction of their original cost. My other option was to keep the textbooks and hope they would remain relevant.

In the sciences, this is a hopeless proposition. As one of my professors in graduate school told me, as soon as a science textbook is printed it is already out of date. That’s how quickly discoveries are made (or how slowly textbooks are published).

Two companies, Chegg and Bookrenter, now allow you to rent textbooks. Choose and pay for the book online, receive it in the mail. At the end of the semester, simply mail the book back in the box provided (return shipping is free). Just like Netflix, the online DVD rental service, but for textbooks.

You can highlight portions of the text and still return the textbook, but only within reason, according to the Chegg Web site. Writing notes in the margins is prohibited.

Molecular Biology of the Cell is a widely-used textbook now in its 5th edition. It retails for $149, you can find it online at Amazon for $115 - or you can rent it for one semester for $50.

Organic Chemistry by Leroy G. Wade, Jr., 7th edition? Retails for $197, Amazon sells it for $152, but you can rent it for a semester for $90. I used the 3rd edition in college and I still own it. I haven’t opened it in a decade! Anybody want a free organic chemistry book?