The average price of college textbooks has been rising at twice the rate of inflation over the last 20 years, something some students might not have noticed because their tuition and fee rates have been rising even faster. But a recent study by the Government Accountability Office on textbooks found both the rising prices and barriers to lower prices. More important, it found publishers claiming their field was highly competitive, which might give universities more influence over the process.

Whether at a two- or four-year college, the average student during the 2003-’04 school year spent nearly $900 on textbooks and supplies. The GAO broke that down to textbook costs attributable to development and production, expected sales and level of competition in the market. The average retail markup for a new textbook is 23 percent; for used, it is 33 percent. New college students, and their parents, are often amazed at the price – $75 for a book? (Reply: You should see what the engineering student had to shell out.)

The GAO concludes that a substantial portion of the increase in costs is caused by supplemental learning material that is included with the texts (and the absence of which can render used books less useful). The supplements included Web-based tutorials and self-assessment tools, which publishers said were required because the increased use of part-time faculty has demanded more extensive support material. The GAO didn’t analyze to what extent the savings from the part-time faculty was offset by the higher materials cost.

For the last three years at the University of Maine, faculty members have helped keep the price of books down by placing orders early. That allows the bookstore to shop wholesale for more used books and to more aggressively buy back books from students. That’s no doubt helpful, but the GAO also observed that students increasingly are shopping for textbooks the same way they shop for so much else – through the Internet. That swiftly leads them overseas, where they see substantially lower prices for the same books for sale on campus. For instance, U.S. textbooks cost less in the United Kingdom, the report says, because they are competing with less-expensive locally produced books.

That often doesn’t help U.S. students, however, because of shipping costs and because of agreements between publishers and foreign distributors that limit the re-importation of these books. Certainly, you wouldn’t want a book explaining the benefits of the global market to be traded freely on the Internet, but if the competition among publishers is as tough as those publishers say, universities should be able to use their purchasing power to persuade them to relax reimportation restrictions in some cases or find less expensive options for presenting supplemental material.

Textbooks are a minor part of education costs and the GAO didn’t find anything that suggests gouging by publishers. But on top of all the other rising costs for higher education, high book prices make it more difficult for students to pay their bills. Anything publishers or universities could do to encourage lower prices would be helpful.