If you're tired of paying several hundred dollars for textbooks each semester, you may be in luck. The House recently passed a bill to aimed at making college textbooks more affordable. The Stingy Scholar reports:

"The College Opportunity and Affordability Act (H.R. 4137) includes three critical provisions to help students deal with textbook prices. First, it requires publishers to tell faculty the price of textbooks when professors are choosing books for their classes. Publishers often withhold prices from professors, hoping that cost won't factor into their decisions - and students end up paying the price. If publishers put price on the table, professors can consider the cost to students when selecting textbooks...Second, the bill makes publishers sell the parts of bundled textbooks separately...Third, the bill encourages colleges to give students course booklists the semester before the class starts so they can shop around and look for better deals. Students can usually track down lower prices and used textbooks online, but they need to know in advance which books to look for."

When the House meets with the Senate to finalize the education bill, the affordability act just may make it into the final cut. That may result in significantly lower textbooks prices for online college students.