A textbook example of price-gouging?

Take a stroll through a university bookstore in this country, and you may get a fast and free education in inflation. At the Youngstown State University Bookstore, for example, you will find a finance textbook selling for $92, a basic economics text with workbook going for $114, a softbound editing primer priced at $84 and a beginning Spanish textbook complete with complementary cassettes and workbook costing a cool $181.85.
Such prices are the norms, not the exceptions. According to the National Association of College Stores, the wholesale price of college textbooks in the United States has gone up a whopping 41 percent over the past six years, more than double the 20 percent increase in all other types of books. It also noted that the average undergraduate student pays between $900 and $1,000 per year on books alone.
The high prices stand as another potential roadblock to access to higher education and opportunity for many would-be students. The spiraling prices also raise some serious questions:
Are college textbook publishers individually or in collusion with one another artificially inflating prices at the expense of their captive targets?
Why are similar textbooks sold overseas at substantially lower prices? For example & quot;The Principles of Microeconomics & quot; is sold in the United States for $83, but in the United Kingdom, the same copy costs $45.13, according to an aide to U.S. Rep. David Wu, D-Ore.
Can universities be required to offer viable solutions, such as ensuring required texts are available on reserve in libraries for student access?
Are there viable alternatives for students, alternatives that in the long run could work to force textbook prices down?
For the benefit of students who have been strapped with consistently higher and higher tuition and increases in other college costs, such questions deserve serious study and honest answers.
Lobbying urged
Fortunately for them, Wu's bill in the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee aims to do just that. U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-17th of Niles, a co-sponsor of House Joint Resolution 3567, urges students and parents to lobby for quick action on the bill.
Specifically, the legislation would require the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, to conduct a full-scale investigation into those and similar questions, then report findings and recommendations within one year.
The review would also center on such issues as the actual cost of producting a textbook, the average dollar amount that students spend on textbooks, whether large price discrepancies occur in specific subject areas, and the average period of time between the production of old and new editions and the extent to which the updated versions differ.
We commend Congressman Ryan for his initiative on this bill and other pro-student measures. For example, he's been a fervent supporter of increasing the shrinking pot of funds for federal Pell grants. He also supports a gestating proposal to provide a tax credit for at least a portion of the cost of college textbooks.
The United States has long prided itself on relatively easy access to postsecondary school education. In recent years, that access has been restricted, because tight state budgets have forced students to shoulder an increasingly larger share of college operating costs.
Pricey college textbooks only tighten that noose more. That's why Ryan's bill deserves a ride on the fast track toward approval.