Expensive textbooks: They're a fact of life that all college students have to face at the beginning of each semester.

Many students express frustration when footing the bill for new textbooks, sometimes saying the only apparent difference from their older editions is the higher price tag.

A study released Tuesday entitled "Required Reading: A Look at the Worst Publishing Tactics at Work" suggests that many of these frustrations are warranted. The study, published by the Student Public Interest Research Groups, examines the tactics that the textbook publishing industry allegedly uses to justify new editions that cost more.

According to the study, such tactics include publishers bundling their textbooks with trivial CD-ROMs and notebooks; extreme customization to a particular professor's course so as to make the book useless outside that course; and making minor changes for the sole purpose of making old and used editions obsolete.

As of press time, officials from Prentice Hall, Glencoe McGraw-Hill and Thomson-Learning did not return phone calls seeking comment on the issue.

The report suggested ways to improve the situation; however, none of them provide a way to eliminate the clear incentive for publishers to continue their for-profit practices.

"The only incentive that will happen is more public exposure of the practices these companies are engaging in — and, to an extent, that faculty members demand lower prices and longer shelf lives of books," said David Rosenfeld, campus program director for the Student PIRG Campus Program. "Those are the two key places where … publishers will start to see the handwriting on the wall."

And with students sometimes spending over $900 per year on textbooks, some are upset and want to know who is responsible.

"The buck stops at the publishers," Rosenfeld said. "They are responsible for the higher prices."

For some universities, public pressure and conscientious professors is not enough. In an effort to bypass the publishers' prices, rental programs are beginning to emerge at some universities.

"Many schools in the [University of Wisconsin] System have set up a rental program, which has been running very well in places like Stevens Point and Eau Claire," Rick La Torra, campus organizer for WISPIRG, said. "At UW-Madison, ASM has started a rental program, but it hasn't received all the necessary funding."

ASM set aside $80,000 to fund the program at UW, but the program was delayed until next year.

According to La Torra, ASM favors a rental program that makes the university pay full price for the books and does not include the fee in student tuition.

"The school itself would at first pay full price for the books, and then from there each student would only pay a small portion of that," he said.

But a potential problem with such a system, La Torra said, is that it requires the repeated use of single-edition college textbooks, which traditionally change very rapidly. If the plan required a purchase for every new edition that came out, it would place a large financial burden on the university.

"That's been a tremendous problem," La Torra added. "What you need to do is get professors that are committed to not change their textbooks and committed to the course for two years."

While such a rental program would alleviate much of the financial burden on students, such commitments are difficult to maintain with thousands of faculty members.

La Torra put it simply: "It's a real sticky and difficult situation."