Recent studies have shown that students spend, on average, nearly $900 per year on their required textbooks. It has also been found that the price of textbooks has increased at over four times the rate of inflation! If you are a student, then this surely is no surprise.

Several Public Interest Research Groups, or PIRG's, have recently released the results of new studies which shed light on the current textbook market. These studies detail the practices publishers use to inflate textbook prices and limit used book availability for college students in the United States and abroad.

If you are interested in reading these studies, please explore the links below. Also, feel free to take part in any of the numerous actions students are now taking to encourage the creation of legislation that would allow used textbooks to become more widely available, and would put in place criteria that would limit publishers' abilities to release new, unnecessary editions of textbooks, without proper justification.

Read the most recent CALPIRG study on the college textbook industry.

Make a difference, and learn more about what you personally can do to lower the price of textbooks.

**(Note: SwapSimple.com has provided the above for your general information, and has no direct involvement with any of the activities or organizations described above.)