High book prices hitting students

SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- The price of college textbooks is soaring, creating an additional burden for students already struggling with the economics of surging tuition.

Since the mid-1980s, the cost of textbooks has risen 6 percent per year -- more than twice the rate of inflation, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday. Some studies show the average student pays as much as $900 per year for books.

A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office blamed publishers in part for deliberately putting out unnecessary new editions of books to circumvent the used book market and justify price hikes.

But publishers say they are forced to charge more for the ever more sophisticated volumes demanded.

A typical textbook likely comes with more illustrations and special features like companion Web sites, supplemental materials or DVDs, said Bruce Hildebrand, vice president for higher education at the Association of American Publishers.

Those demands are difficult to meet for an industry already charged with providing very technical texts to a relatively small market further undercut by the massive used-book market, Hildebrand said.

While students may feel helpless, professors are trying to help by moving away from textbooks, and some aggressive campus bookstores have done extra work to secure larger stocks of used books.